I’ve been unable to post much since Easter thanks to
university obligations (apparently you actually have to study to get a degree),
which is a shame because I’ve had two posts in my head waiting to be written
since then; one about making Danish pastries, and one about the Creative
Writing Society’s trip to Wales. But in the meantime, here’s one about making
cheesecake with approximately half the equipment needed (and this recipe (and I’ll
be writing as if you’ve read it)).
The first problem was that neither I nor my housemates own a
rolling pin. The second problem was that we don’t own any scales. The third
problem was that I very much doubted that the digestive biscuits I guessed to
be about 250g would fit in one of our plastic food bags.
My first solution was to break the guessed quantity of
biscuits up and sandwich them between two sheets of cling film and crush them
with a flat dish. This didn’t go too well. The top layer of cling film kept
sticking to the bottom of the dish and I didn’t use enough cling film so I
still had to separate my broken biscuits into two halves to crush them. Plus,
if I’d have carried on trying to crush the biscuits with the dish, it would
have taken forever.
My second solution was to put the biscuits in the dish and use a tin can as a
substitute rolling pin. This worked much better.
It was much easier to get the right amount of butter, thanks
to the labelling on its packaging.
Melting the butter and making the base. The recipe suggests
a round loose-bottomed tin and baking parchment, neither of which we had, so I
used a rectangular tin and tin foil instead. I do not recommend using tin foil
as it creases and tears very easily, which means your cheesecake will end up in
odd shapes and will be very difficult to remove.
While the base was chilling in the fridge, I started on the
filling. I had never seen a vanilla pod before! Also I forgot that, while we
don’t own scales, we do actually own a measuring jug, so I ended up guessing
the amount of cream.
 |
| Vanilla pods |
 |
| WHAT A LOT OF SOFT CHEESE |
Before and after mixing the filling:
 |
| Once the filling is spread on top of the base |
In the end, I didn’t unmould the cheesecake as the recipe
suggests, but instead topped it while still in the tin. Tesco didn’t have any
strawberries when I went in for ingredients so I used raspberries instead.
Rather than blending some of the raspberries and putting the rest on top, I
blended all of them and then grated chocolate over it.
It’s been about two months since I made this recipe so it’s
a little hard to remember the verdict. It was nice, although I would’ve preferred
having more base compared to filling and strawberries probably would’ve been
nicer than raspberries, which were slightly sour. Also I would definitely
recommend having the right equipment – it would’ve been much easier!
