Wednesday 25 January 2012

How to: make a vanilla cheesecake

I'd never made a cheesecake before and always thought they would be a bit tricky... after all, you are turning cream cheese (yuck) into pudding-esque cake (yum).  I didn't even know you could make them without using an oven! Turns out you can.

So. Ingredients. You'll need to look out a dish in advance - I just used a fairly big cake tin (with a loose base).

  • 12 digestive biscuits
  • 125g butter
  • 200g philadelphia cheese
  • 85g icing sugar
  • 300mls double cream
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • some raspberries


Start by crushing up the biscuits - a fun way to do this is by putting the biscuits in a sandwich bag and bashing them with a rolling pin (very satisfying). Then melt the butter and mix the two together. 


Line the bottom of your tin (cake pan) with the mixture. Really squish it down and fill in all gaps. Pop in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the mixture.


Mix together the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Make sure it's nice and smooth.


Whip the cream, and then fold it into the cream cheese/sugar mixture. Folding basically means that you want to mix it all together, but gently so that all the air that is now in the mixture (from the whipped cream) stays there. 

Now get the tin from the fridge, and add the mixture on top of the biscuit base. Smooth over using a spatula to get it as even and flat as possible. At this stage you could just pop it in the fridge and have a nice vanilla cheesecake, but I wanted to use raspberries.


 First I squished them through a (very old) sieve, to get the juice.


Then added icing sugar, plus a wee bit of whipped cream (just a spoon or so that I scraped from the bowl) to thicken it up. I just made it up as I went along really - I just wanted it to be thick enough that it wouldn't go EVERYWHERE when poured on top.


Spoon onto the cheesecake in whatever style works for you (I went for splodgy, but it would look lovely and smart with the raspberry syrup all over the top). Add raspberries to decorate and put in the fridge to chill.


I've read lots of different advice on how long to leave cheesecake.. some places say 1 hour, some say 4, some say overnight at least! We left this for about two hours and it was still a little soft when cut into, but very nice nonetheless.

15 comments :

  1. This looks gorgeous!

    Vanilla Cheesecake is my best friend's favourite cake! I know what I'm making them for their birthday this year! Thank you so much for sharing!! xx

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    1. Aww, excellent! That's really sweet of you, hope they like it x

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  2. this looks so delicious Ö Now I get hungry Ö

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    1. Ha, it was lovely. You should give it a go! x

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  3. This looks pretty tasty. Been fancying making a cheesecake recently so may well try this recipe out. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Ooh great, let me know how you get on! It's really easy and tasty x

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  4. this looks so yummy! definitely going to make this soon!

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  5. Just found your blog after you commented on mine, I love it!

    Off to read some more.

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  6. That last shot of the cake made me crave for some of this vanilla cheese cake. I'll be sure to make some later.

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  7. I always wanted to make a cheesecake of my own. The last time I have eaten one is when we're on suffolk county catering halls
    for my friend's wedding

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  8. Does this work without the raspberries

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  9. Wowowow! So cool! I want to try to cook it immediately.. But that’s my cookerguru! I can’t cook without my little cooker. So, that’s.. ummm.. hard!

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