American Cheesecake | Lewis & Kim

Week 99 – wow it’s almost 100 blogs for this Mary Berry challenge and I am still a way to go yet- I take my hat off to Anneliese who completed her “Rising to the Berry” challenge that inspired me in just 18 months! When I begin to flag or get a bit despondent, I read the original article about her and I remember what inspired me to start this path.

Any how, on this week’s dip into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, I found the orange drop scones and the American chocolate ripple cheesecake. I started at the weekend with the orange drop scones which were a breeze to make. Mary’s recipe for these is easy to follow and mix and I halved the recipe as this was just going to be brunch for hubby and I.

I heated my ceramic frying pan and poured spoons of the mixture in, about three at a time. I gave each one a few minutes and flipped them over. You could smell the orange in them as they were cooking. Soon enough, Hubby and I had 5 or 6 each in the middle of a plate and we enjoyed them with some butter and maple syrup- yum!

The second recipe I chose was the American chocolate ripple cheesecake which is a baked cheesecake. The recipe is a staged recipe in that you begin by putting some dark chocolate digestives in a bag and crush them, melt some butter, add the crushed digestives, mix well and press into the base of a loose bottomed tin. I always think Mary skimps on this part so as usual I topped up the base with some more crushed biscuit and butter mix. I then put this in the fridge to set.

Mary then asks you to beat the cheese mix until soft and melt the chocolate. Put half of the cheesecake mix in blobs on the cheesecake base and add the chocolate to the other half and mix well. Add this to the base in between the white mix and then use a spoon to swirl it around so it has a rippled effect. Bake as per the recipe and don’t worry that the cheese cake cracks when it cools , Mary warns you about this. Keep the cheesecake in the fridge . It is very rich and you will only want a small slice but it is best eaten as fresh as possible.

I thought this recipe was going to quick and easy for week forty three but between all the steps needed to make it and the chilling time, we are suddenly in Thursday and the blog won’t write itself! Mary Berry’s American Cheesecake sounded lovely and the base was easy enough, Mary tells you to melt the butter and add crushed digestive biscuits and press into the tin and chill.

The middle section- the cheese of the cheesecake was next. As usual Mary wants full fat soft cheese and full fat greek yoghurt and double cream. Well by now, you know that I will be looking to try and make it slightly healthier so I shopped for low fat soft cheese, fat free greek yoghurt and the usual Elmlea double lite. These all had to be added together and then the juice of one and half lemons had to be added gradually. Pour this mix onto the biscuit base and chill at least overnight.

The final part was to add raspberries to the top of the cheesecake and some redcurrant jelly. Then- you guessed it, allow it to chill and set. I had initially used my trusty flan/quiche tin to make this but quickly realised when I added the cheese layer that the tin wasn’t going to be deep enough for the fruit topping. So I re-read the Mary Berry Baking Bible and she recommends using a spring form tin. Well, the hardship was going to do some retail therapy and buy a tin. Luckily it was only slightly bigger than the quiche tin so it transferred well. All I had to do was press the cheese layer to the edge of the tin so that the fruit topping and jelly didn’t go down the sides.

The final cheesecake looked okay, I was pleased with it. I added the ingredients to the app on my phone which works out how many calories per slice…. the cheesecake serves eight, and one slice was THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX calories! God knows what the calorie count would have been if I had used Mary’s full fat ingredients..