As I sit here on a chilly Saturday morning with the fire blazing and a large mug of tea taking some time clearing a backlog of overdue emails I come across a mail for Jill dated October requesting my cheesecake recipe. Jill and her husband spent a few days with us over the summer and she wrote as below:
"Talking of food, the cheese cake lasted a couple of days. We were very glad of it on the train to Paris. We returned the car in Reims and had a taxi to Gare de Champagne-Ardennes only to find our train was actually leaving from Gare de Reims. Our ticket said that but we hadn't checked it so not your problem. A quick train back and straight onto the correct TGV so no time to have any other snack so your cake was appreciated. I have searched your blog loving all the tales and fun you have personally had but I cannot find the recipe to the cheese cake. PLEASE send it to me or tell me where to find it."
So here it is for Jill to make and enjoy over the summer is sizzling Australia!
I have
always loved baked cheesecake but as I grew up in a household where we ate the
unbaked style I never really explored making one myself. I did love it though
and used to order it whenever I spotted it in a café or restaurant! My good
friend Julia gave me a ‘New York Style Cheesecake’ recipe which was so rich and
'stick to the spoon' heavy with cream…a dense delicious affair! This was ‘the one
‘ I made at the house for a good couple of years until I met Sophie!
Sophie is
just divine…a Korean married to a Frenchman she met when working in Australia she now lives in
Paris. She had visited on numerous occasions with her husband, son and family
and decided that she wanted to celebrate her 50th in the garden at
the house with a big dinner! Now Sophie loves food and good tea! She is so
generous with her love of cooking that after her first stay at ‘Aupres de
l’eglise’ after listening to me explaining about how, compared to London, it
was so difficult to get Asian ingredients in Champagne she sent me a HUGE box
from Paris full of Sushi rice, sauces, and seaweed!Amazing!
So I
casually asked Sophie what she would like for her birthday cake…’A cheesecake’…that’s
easy I thought! Then she continued ‘not the heavy American style but the light
lemony French style baked Cheesecake ’Gateau de Fromage’.
So I searched all of
my cookbooks, the internet and all manner of sources and finally came up with
this recipe! It remains a staple for any special occasion in the house and even
the most discerning Cheesecake Connoisseurs approve…light, lemony, simple and
gorgeous served with fresh berries, poached fruit or alone with mascarpone
whipped with lemon zest and icing sugar! And Sophie loved it!
BAKED
LEMON CHEESECAKE…original
by Rick Stein…
Preheat the
oven to 150 deg celcius
FOR THE
BASE:
1 packet of
biscuits [200 gms]
100 gms of
butter
2 tbsp of
caster sugar
1. Crush a small packet of biscuits of
your liking…digestives, ginger
biscuits, specaloos or plain butter biscuits.
2. Melt 100 grams of butter and mix the
crushed biscuits into the butter with 2 tablespoons of caster sugar.
3.
Line a springform cake tin with tinfoil and press the crumbs into it
and
put in the fridge to chill.
FOR THE
FILLING:
500 gm of
full fat Philadelphia cream cheese
200 gm
caster sugar
3 eggs
2 tbsp of
cornflour
300 ml of
cream fraiche
Finely
grated zest of a lemon and 3 tbsp of juice.
- Beat the cream cheese and sugar till combined.
- Add eggs and beat well.
- Pop your mixing bowl onto the scales and add the cornflour, cream fraiche and lemon zest and juice.
- Put the bowl back on the mixer and beat again till very well combined.
- Scrape the contents of the bowl on top of the base.
- Place in the centre of the oven for 50 mins – 1hr and then turn the oven off and leave the cheese cake in the oven till cold.
- Do not panic…It is usual for the cheesecake to develop an earthquake style crack across the top.
Place the
cheesecake in the fridge from the oven till ready to serve. I often do this the
day before needed…
When you are
ready to serve I remove the cheesecake from the tin removing
all of the tinfoil and placing on a plate or cakestand. I then carefully ‘ice’
with some more crème fraiche to make the top look prettier and then decorate
with berries, a small bunch of grapes sprinkled with icing sugar, oe a simple
slice of lemon cut and twisted…serve with fruit and wait for the compliments!
Any leftovers in our house are usually snavelled by female guests for breakfast
or eaten by Amelia and her friends! It keeps well in the fridge for a few days…sorry no pic's!
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