Made by Jayne

I am taking part in this months Bake Together held each month by Abby Dodge, where we are invited to use a recipe from Abby and make our own changes to that recipe. The theme for the February bake together is Cheesecake!  I’m supposed to be on a diet, supposed to be watching the carbs so cheesecake making I should not be taking part in! But its cheesecake which happens to be one of my husbands favorite desserts and it’s almost Valentines day so it’s a great excuse to make something nice! Reading this back I can see how I’m justifying making the cheesecake! To hell with it! I just want some cheesecake! I’ve seen a few great versions of others joining in the Bake together and dreamt up a few of my own versions, so here it is my variation of Abby’s recipe.

Really, I thought Abby’s recipe sounded and looked just perfect so I found I really wanted to make 2 cheesecakes, one of the original recipe and one of my version but there I did resist! I will be making Abby’s another time!

For my version the first thing I changed was the size, as it was only my husband and I eating the cheesecake (and I’ve got that boring diet nag in the back of my head!) I halved the recipe. I have a cute little 5 inch loose bottom cake tin so I used that. The next change was the easiest as I don’t have any Graham crackers so for the base I used Lotus biscuits, also known as Speculoos. This was going to be a chocolate cheesecake , with Valentine’s in mind but then I saw some lovely big strawberries in the supermarket so I got those to use  instead. I should have known better, no matter how lovely strawberries look, out of season they are always a disappointment! Not wanting to make another shopping trip I sprinkled some sugar onto the strawberries and roasted them to bring out their flavour. I then pureed the strawberries to swirl through the vanilla mix once in the baking tin.

I was a little heavy-handed with my swirling of the puree so the cheesecake was a little more pink than I intended but that does not affect the taste, which I was very happy with! I did have alittle too much for a 5 inch pan so Ithink this would work better with a 6 inch if you have one.

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake (adapted from this recipe by Abby Dodge)

For the Strawberry Swirl:

• 300 gram Strawberries, rinsed, hulled and cut in halves
• 2 tsp sugar

For the crust:

• 130 gram finely crushed lotus biscuit crumbs
•  45 gram unsalted butter, melted
• 25 grams granulated sugar (I use unrefined)

For the filling:

• 360 grams cream cheese, at room temperature
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 130 gram granulated sugar
• 120 ml sour cream, at room temperature
• Seeds scraped from 2 vanilla beans or 2 tsp pure vanilla extract or paste
• 2  large eggs, at room temperature

To make the strawberry puree

1. Preheat oven to  300 degrees F, 150 degrees C, Gas mark 2
2. Place the prepared strawberries in a baking tray, sprinkle with sugar and bake for around 1 and a half hours, until the strawberries have shrunk a little and given out their juices.
3. Place in a blender and puree, you may need to add a few drops of water to get things moving if the strawberries are not that juicy.
4. Reserve the puree for later.

To make the Cheesecake

I followed Abby’s instructions  See here until just before putting in the oven.

Then I dropped a few teaspoons of strawberry puree on the top of the cheesecake already in its tin.

With a skewer I swirled the puree into the cheesecake. The idea is to make gentle swirls but I was a little heavy-handed and over mixed so did not get the swirls I was after. A light swirling motion is all that is needed.

I then followed Abby’s instructions again for the cooking and cooling See here