I’ve always had the urge to make my own cheesecake, but have never had any idea where to start. I couldn’t get my head around if it would be easy or complicated, or even whether you’d need to bake it or just put it in the fridge, so I went in completely blind when I was searching for a recipe. With so many options out there I decided to limit myself to the BBC Good Food app when I was searching, and settled on one of their Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake recipes (after saving lot’s of other cheesecake options to my wishlist).
INGREDIENTS
300g digestive biscuits
140g melted butter
275g golden caster sugar
100g blueberries
1 tsp cornflour
900g full fat cream cheese (I used Philadelphia for mine)
4 tbsp plain flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
200ml soured cream
METHOD
Before you start the baking, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6, and line a baking tray (preferably 20cm x 30cm) with grease proof paper. To make the base, whizz up the biscuits in a blender, or if you don’t have a blender just pop them in a bowl and beat them into crumbs using the end of a rolling pin. When you have a bowl of fine crumbs, pour in the melted butter and mix together until combined. Use this to base the lined baking tin, and place in the oven for 10 minutes. After this time leave to cool.
While this is happening, tip 25g of the golden caster sugar in a small pan along with the blueberries. Mix together the cornflour and 1 tbsp or water separately, and when combined also add to the blueberry and sugar mix in the pan. Heat on a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved, then turn up the heat slightly until it’s bubbling, and let it stay like this for 1-2 minutes, until it’s a saucy consistency.
In a large bowl, whisk the cream cheese until it’s smooth. First add the rest of the sugar, and whisk this together. Then, once that’s combined, add in the flour, vanilla extract, eggs, and soured cream. Whisk until all the ingredients are combined into one smooth mixture.
Pour half the cheesecake mixture on top of the biscuit base you’ve made, then on top of this dollop on half of the blueberry mixture. Then, layer on the remaining cheesecake mix, and use a spatula to smooth the top. Finally add on the remaining blueberry mix. To get the swirl effect, use the end of a spoon to ripple it into the mix. Bake the mix for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 110C/90C/1/4 gas mark and bake for another 30 minutes.
Then, turn off the heat of the oven, but don’t open the door. Leave the cheesecake in the oven for 1 hour. After this time, slightly open the oven door ajar and leave for another hour. Finally, remove the cake from the oven and leave at room temperature until it’s cooled down. Once completely cool, put in the fridge for a minimum of 3 hours, or if possible, overnight.
It’s not a cheap recipe, especially if you use Philadelphia like I did, and does require a little of a lot of ingredients, but it is delicious, and I’m definitely going to be trying some of the other flavours that I’ve seen.
xx
