Monday, May 11, 2009

Strawberry topped lemon cheesecake

Photoframes, mugs, (fake) jewellery, long poems & hand-drawn pictures filled with praise... it's funny how as a kid you put much more effort into presents for your parents than when you're grown up.

Anyways, this Mother's Day I was stuck at what to do just before the weekend hit - eventually it was a nice lunch at Mediterranean restaurant Athena in Pavillion (the Paella was sadly so-so) but mom has also been hinting at wanting to make no-bake cheesecake (her fave type of cake) for the last few weeks, so I decided to also surprise her with it.

I realised a little too late into the process that I didn't have enough ingredients for the first recipe I was going to go with, so ended up winging it and combining bits from two recipes... What can I say, you can't go wrong with cheesecake....

Strawberry Topped Lemon Cheesecake
Ingredients:
For the base:
1 cup finely crushed Marie biscuit crumbs
1/2 cup oats
Melted butter
2 tablespoons milk

For the cheese filling:
250g (one pack) Philadelphia Cream Cheese

3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 egg - seperated
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoon gelatin powder
a pinch of salt
Lemon zest

Strawberry Topping:
Fresh strawberries sliced
Gelatin powder (mixed with some hot water)
Confectioner's sugar


Method:
1. In a saucepan, whisk egg yolk into milk, sugar, salt. Place on low heat, add lemon zest, gelatin and continue whisking until it thickens and slightly coats spoon. Remove off heat and leave aside to cool.
2. Mix all the ingredients for the crumb base and firmly press into the bottom of your pan/bowl.
3. In a mixing bowl, beat egg white until fluffy. Combine cream cheese with lemon juice and fold in the fluffy egg white. Whisk in earlier thickened custard mixture until you get a smooth creamy filling.
4. Pour filling on top of crumbs base and refridgerate for half an hour.
5. To make topping, heat strawberries, sugar, gelatin water and sugar until the juices thicken. Spoon over cheesecake and place in fridge to set. Should be ready to serve in about an hour.

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