Sunday, May 14, 2006
Lime Cheesecake with Mango Compote
Look for the positive things in life - that was to be my motto today. And what can be more positive than a nice desert? So, even though we still had some of yesterday's pud left, I decided to make something that would go well with tonight's summery Mexican theme. Lime cheesecake came to mind and as I still had an organic mango that wanted to go, I decided to top it all with a fruity fresh compote. Forgetting that Lofty preferred dense, New York style cheesecakes, I opted for the fluffy creamy type. Also, my base is made up of chocolate Swiss roll, but that was the result of an accident rather than a planned personal twist. I did want to add chocolate in some way because of the Mexican connection, but that was supposed to be more of a finishing touch - a sprinkle of cocoa or grated chocolate for example.So I began making a traditional biscuit base: Coarsely crush your biscuits, the process them in an electric food processor until they resemble a coarse meal. Add the melted butter and continue blending until the mixture holds together. Push into the bottom of a cake tin and continue with the cheese mixture. At least that was the theory. My biscuits had been out in the Dublin air for too long and gone all soft and spongy as a result. Rather than crumbling, they simply bent when the knife blades of the food processor hit them. Lofty had the idea of forcing them down with a spatula, which worked well to start with, but then went horribly wrong. Without noticing it, he had been touching the plastic edge of the spatula against the rotating bit at the centre of the food processor, slowly grinding away at it and dropping the plastic shavings into the biscuit crumbs. So even though he had saved my base, I could not use it. What now? I had no more biscuits, no cookies, nothing remotely base-like. A baseless cheesecake is rather naff, though. In my despair I decided to just slice up a shop bought chocolate Swiss roll - with surprising results. The combination of chocolate and lime actually worked very well. For texture reasons I would have preferred not to have any cream in the base, but this was a minor flaw. In all, the dish was quite nice.
For the cheesecake:
½ chocolate Swiss roll, cut into thick slices
200 ml cream
100g mascarpone cheese
100g cream cheese
5 tbsp icing sugar (more if needed)
1 lime, peel only
2 tsp honey
For the mango compote:
1 tbsp butter
1 small sweet mango (or ½ large mango), peeled and diced
2 tbsp light brown sugar
Place the cream in the bowl of a food processor and whisk until thick. Stir in the mascarpone and cream cheese and continue blending until smooth. Add the icing sugar, honey and lime peel and stir until combined. Check for sweetness and add more sugar if needed.
Spoon the cheese mixture into a large metal cake tin or saucepan and smooth off the top. Refrigerate until set, at least 30 minutes. Cover the cheesecake with a layer of slices Swiss roll, packing it in tightly, but not too tightly. Push down to get the base to stick to the cake and refrigerate for another 15 to 20 minutes (or longer, of course).
In the meantime make the mango compote. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the mango and fry until beginning to go tender, 2 to 5 minutes depending on how ripe your fruit is. Finally, stir in the sugar and continue stewing until lightly caramelised. Set aside to cool.
To remove the cake from the tin, carefully heat the tin with a blowtorch to allow it to slide off easily. Slide a long knife along the edge of the tin, to ease the mixture off the walls. Place a plate on top of the tin and turn it over with one swift, fluid movement. If the cake does not drop down onto the plate, feel the temperature of the tin. If it feels too cold, torch it again. If it is at room temperature or not far below, stay away from heat to prevent melting your cake. Try giving the whole thing a single sharp shake up and down, holding the plate firmly in place. Do not shake or shuffle it side to side. This will only cause the cake to stick to the sides of the tin and come out a mess.
To serve, cut the cake into slices and top with the mango compote.
Christine at 11:03 pm
