Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Baked Cheesecake
After days of dragging my feet I finally got round to baking my cheesecake tonight. This was not so
much because I really felt that we needed a cake a 11 o'clock at night, but because at about 9.30 I realised that we were expecting a Tesco delivery for tomorrow, so it was time to get the fridge sorted out. And part of that sorting out was to find a way of using up a 500g tub of low fat frommage frais they had delivered last time in the place of my ultra-high fat Greek yoghurt.At the time I was not amused. There aren't many dairy products that I dislike, but as far as I'm concerned low fat yoghurt might as well not exist. It's a total con job. They take milk in its natural state, remove the element that gives it most taste, add a bunch of stabilisers so people don't run away when they see the mess you're trying to sell them, then they throw a bunch of E numbers into the mix to give you the illusion that the bright red stuff you're eating really contains strawberries and then they sell it to you as health food. What???
But I'm losing myself in a rant again. I don't have to buy the stuff, so I should leave people who do alone. And when this frommage frais ended up with me by accident, Tesco immediately reimbursed me the money. I must say their service is impeccable. I've been ordering from them for a year now and although they sometimes do not deliver everything I ordered (any shop can run out of anything, so that's not really a problem unique to the delivery service) and I occasionally get stuff I didn't want, they have never been late, are always polite and all queries are dealt with quickly and have always been resolved to my satisfaction. Two thumbs up here. And in this case, I must admit, I wasn't even too disappointed with what I'd received. It was not low fat yoghurt (which I have had once before), but frommage frais, which needs no artificial additions to be low fat. It's just an accident of nature that it is. I had tried to order frommage frais from them before to test my cheesecake recipe, but they were sold out. But this time they had it and decided to give it to me for free, so all was perfect in the end.
For the base:
100g flour
a pinch of baking powder
40g sugar
a small pinch of salt
75g butter
½ egg, beaten
For the filling:
500g frommage frais
3 heaped tbsp thick cream
180g sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 large eggs
2 egg yolks
40g flour
Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt, then kneed in the butter and egg to make a smooth dough. Roll it into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and refregirate for at least 1 hour.
Butter a 26cm cake tin. Roll the dough out into a large disk and line the tin. Allow the pastry to come up about 4 to 5cm up the side of the tin. Prick the base a few times with a fork. Return to the refrigerator while you are making the filling.
Line a sieve with a cloth or some kitchen roll and place over a bowl. Pour in the frommage frais and allow to drain for at least 1 hour. When the frommage frais has dried out, mix all filling ingredients in a large bowl. Combine well.
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Pour the filling mixture into the base and place in the middle of the oven. Bake until golden brown, about 40 to 50 minutes. If the top looks like it may be tearing, turn off the heat and open the oven door, but leave the cake in the oven to continue baking. If all goes well, simply turn the heat off when the cake is done and leave the cake sitting in the oven with the door open for about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before serving. (If you cut the cheesecake while it is still hot, you run a risk of it crumbling to bits.)
Christine at 10:20 pm
