Raspberry cheesecake to impress your friends.

 

Everyone likes cheese cake, right?

 

Remember the one that your mum or nana would make cheesecake when you were younger? Biscuity base, cheesey middle and raspberry or passionfruit jelly on top. Free childhood memories for all right there…

 

So recently I was helping a young padiwan of mine, who had been working on her restaurant menu for a Tafe assessment. She had a few random desserts on her menu, but didin’t really like any of them (note please. It is very important that when you are cooking food you are cooking something you like. What’s the point if not for the love of food? Yeah, eating. I know. Smart ass), so we starting talking about desserts she did like, and her nana’s cheesecake was at the top of the list. Then we set about making it a little bit more restauranty (as you sometimes have to do), and this is what we came up with…

 

‘raspberry cheesecake’

 

cheesecake mousse

500g cream cheese, at room temp

500ml thickened cream

½ cup icing sugar mix

zest ½ lemon

 

Whisk the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon zest with 2 tablespoons of cream to get it moving. It needs to be nice and smooth, no little lumps of cream cheese (but remember there’s lemon zest in there so don’t freak out about that).

In a separate bowl whisk the thickened cream to medium stiff peaks.

Add the whipped cream to the  cheese mix, a bit at a time, and fold through. BE GENTLE. It’s the cheeses first time… and you want to keep some air in the mix.

Set aside in fridge until serving

 

vanilla bean chantilly cream

500ml thickened cream

2 Tbls icing sugar mix

1 vanilla bean, scraped

 

all in and whisk until you have whipped cream, which is essentially what you are making.

 

raspberry jelly (start the day before)

500g fresh or frozen raspberries

1 cup water

1 cup castor sugar

3 gelatine leaves or whatever the equivilant is in gelatine powder

 

Soak the gelatine leaves in enogh cold water to cover, or if using powder dissolve it in a little water or something I guess. Surely it will tell you on the packet.

Simmer the sugar and water in a pot until sugar has dissolved. This is called a sugar syrup.

Put the softened gelatine leaves into the warm sugar syrup and stir until they have dissolved.

Add the raspberries to this mix and put in a bowl in the fridge over night to set.

 

biscuit base crumble

250g biscuit crumbs

100g plain flour

200g unsalted butter, softened

100g raw sugar

 

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly with your fingers.

Into a lined baking tray and pat down to about 1cm thick (don’t get to precious about this because we’re going to smash it up anyway).

Bake at 160C in a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Leave to cool on the bench top.

 

to serve

Crush the biscuit base and put it down on the plate so it looks all pretty. Make a quenelle (if you can do a quenelle, otherwise maybe use an ice cream scoop or a piping bag) of the mousse and place that on top of the crumble, then the same with the chantilly and another quenelle of the mousse. Spoon a bit of the raspberry jelly around the plate and off you go. Suss the pic if you’re having trouble figuring this out. Oh, and we also served ours with a little crème anglaise.

 

Bang on. You are in fer sure…