We had a particularly disastrous experience with a cheesecake on Mother’s Day 2020.  We had made a strawberry (I think!) cheesecake for dessert and very quickly had to adapt by sending our Mother’s Day lunch out in boxes as we’d been told to close on the Friday evening due to Covid-19.

 

For some reason – and it’s all a bit of a blur – the cheesecake fell out of the tin, and we had no choice but to box up the quite frankly creamy mess for people to collect!  (Our sincere apologies if this was you).  We used full fat cream cheese, double cream and all the right ingredient quantities but something was against us and it put me off making cheesecake for quite a while.

 

Sometime later during lockdown, with slightly more time on my hands, I decided to give it a go again.  Now a cheesecake should set with the key ingredients but I was taking no chances!  I tried gelatine…just don’t!  Then I tried chocolate – and it worked.

 

So now, regardless of what cheesecake we are making, I add chocolate to ensure stability and as a setting agent.  If the flavours are not chocolate-based I will still use white chocolate through the mix as a safety measure.

Our current cheesecake is raspberry and white chocolate.  Here’s how it’s made:

For the buttery biscuit base blitz 300 grams (g) of digestive biscuits in a food processor (or bash them in a plastic bag with a rolling pin) until they resemble sand.  Melt 150g butter (the real stuff, not marg or sunflower spread) and combine the butter with the biscuits.

Line a tin with baking paper (this helps with getting the cheesecake out afterwards) and press the biscuit mix evenly into the base of the tin.  Cool and then chill in the fridge to set for about half an hour.

The filling is made by whipping 300g double cream with 100g icing sugar and a splash of vanilla until firm, then add in 750g full fat cream cheese and continue whipping to combine.  Meanwhile melt 100g white chocolate either in a microwave in 30 second blasts or in a heat proof bowl over a pan of boiling water.   Leave the chocolate to cool slightly then fold through the cream cheese mix along with 250g raspberries (fresh or frozen will both work).  Spoon the filling into the tin on top of the biscuit base and spread to smooth the top.  Chill in the fridge preferably overnight before taking out of the tin to cut and enjoy.

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