Week Forty Three – Mary Berry’s American Cheesecake

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.

Mary Berry's American Cheesecake

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.

Kim's American cheesecake

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..

American Cheesecake

Week Thirty Nine – Mary Berry’s Easy Lemon Cheesecake

This week , a pudding was needed for after dinner with my other mum and dad so I happily sat and browsed through Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and found this easy yet delicious sounding cheesecake. The base of the cheesecake was crushed digestive biscuits with melted butter, pressed into a flan tin and left to set. No problem there.

Mary Berry's Easy Lemon Cheesecake

The filling was the grated rind and juice of three lemons, not an issue but you soon know if you have a cut on your finger- or like me, manage to grate your finger with the rind!, to this, Mary asks for some single cream and condensed milk, well as Mary is very fond of the full fat varieties, I substituted the single cream for Elmlea lighter single cream and the condensed milk for the lighter condensed milk, it just cuts down on the amount of calories a little. You put the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together until slightly thickened and then pour it onto the base and allow to set for at least four hours or overnight if possible.

I left mine overnight and then looked at what Mary suggests to finish the cheesecake- double cream whipped, and strawberries…….well I made a Kim executive decision and took out the double cream. I then decided that strawberries were not the best company for a lemon cheesecake so I simply decorated mine with some clementine segments.

Kim's Easy Lemon Cheesecake

We all seemed to enjoy the cheesecake after dinner, and as usual, dad had a second helping. There was about a third of the cheesecake left and we divided that in half so that each household had a little more for supper….or so we thought….our half slipped off the plate…and as you can see, the dogs had a cheesecake feast!

The Hairy Hoolies Cheesecake Feast

Week Thirteen…migraine alert….Oat Biscuits AND Dorchester Biscuits

Wow, week thirteen came upon me so quickly and as my thumb was feeling better, I was going to tackle something more savoury, something like one of the bread recipes which can take some time-and kneading!

But come Saturday morning, i was struck with the worst migraine I have ever had, nausea, sickness, banging head, and no tablets would touch it- I was put back to bed and Saturday was a complete washout. I felt a little better on Sunday and went shopping, taking it easy as I could feel the headache still there….sigh.

Anyway, I didn’t want to miss a week, so decided on the oats biscuits recipe and then decided I liked the Dorchester biscuit recipe too so decided to do another ” 2 for 1″ recipe weeks.

                                     

The oats biscuits , Mary claims are a relative of the digestive biscuit, kind of but I think they are more along the lines of hob-nobs and Mary,  I rolled, and re-rolled, but I couldn’t get 16 biscuits out of my mix! I managed 12 and I think I got a pretty even bake so I was happy with them.

The Dorchester biscuit, I had never heard of but it was a savoury kind of biscuit so I went with it, made the mix and Mary then recommends that you roll “walnut” sized balls, and slightly press them down, sprinkle some crushed nuts on the top and you should get about 30 out of your batch? Really? I think my idea of walnut size and Mary’s are quite different!

Any way, the Dorchester biscuit is a strange entity, it kind of thinks it’s a cheese straw but with added nuts, but I thought although unusual, they were rather scrummy!