perfect pastry, perfect cheesy mix, dark chocolate - YUM!

This is not the cheesecake I learnt to bake at my mother’s knee.  That cheesecake is a light and fluffy, lemonscented confection.  This cheesecake is heavier, richer, chocolatey-er, and easier to bake.  I have been making it a lot at the deli recently and as it has been so well received we keep baking it.  The original recipe came from Julie Le Clerc’s Little Cafe Cakes.  And she says the idea for a polka dot cheesecake came from Maida Heatter.  Genius-whoever started it.  Here is my version.

For the pastry:

Put

4 cups plain (cake ) flour

• 8T caster sugar
• 240g ground almond
• 500g chilled butter

into your food processor and pulse till grainy

Add

• 2 t vanilla extract

Mix

• 8 egg yolks:16T cold water

Gently work into a pastry.

Push into buttered, floured, loose based tins.  This pastry makes 2 20-25cm tins.  You can always freeze the one prepared tin, ready for your next baking day. Chill the other one in the freezer too, until ready to bake.

Preheat the oven to 180*C

For the filling:

Melt:  150g dark bitter chocolate and allow to cool

Cream together

• 300g  ricotta
• 150g creme fraiche
• 100g cream cheese
• 1 golden caster sugar

When light and fluffy, add

• 1 t vanilla extract
• 2 large freerange eggs

and beat gently until all combined.

Take the pastry tin out of the freezer and grate a few hazelnuts over the bottom.

Bake for 10 minutes then remove and cool.

Take out 1/4 to 1/3 of the mix and fold in the melted chocolate.

Fill the cooled pastry case with the rest of the ricotta mix.

Put the chocolate mix into a piping bag with a large nozzle.  Pipe big blobs of chocolate ricotta into the cake at regular (or random) intervals.

You can drag a skewer through the blobs if you prefer hearts to polka dots.

Lower the oven temp to 150*C and bake for 25 minutes (if doing small individual cakes) or up to 50 mins for larger cakes.  The surface should be dry but not cracked and the centre should still be a little wobbly.

Allow to cool before cutting.

YUM!

Cream cheese, like Ricotta is a dead easy thing to make. I generally make my own yoghurt anyway, especially if I have a surplus of milk, and this cream cheese was made with a surplus of yoghurt.

• Line a sieve or perforated container with a piece of muslin.
• Mix the juice of 1 large lemon into 500ml of yoghurt
• I added two teaspoons of Orange Flower Water and the finely grated zest of the lemon too.
• Twist the top of the muslin (cheesecloth) together and weight down with a side plate.
• Stand the sieve in a bowl or container large enough to ensure that the bottom of the sieve does not touch the bottom of the bowl.
• Cover with a lid or foil so that the cream cheese doesn’t pick up fridge odours, and leave in the fridge to drain for 24 hours, pouring off any excess whey when it becomes too full.
• Once all the whey is drained you can compact your cheese slightly by twisting the muslin round.
• Unmould into a bowl, cover and keep in the refrigerator.
• Use within a week.

If you are wanting to use your cream cheese for savoury dishes you can add seasoning when you add the lemon juice, instead of the orange blossom water.

Thank you for trying a Vanielje Kitchen recipe.

I hope it fed you mind, body and soul.

Sift together

• 1 cup of organic plain (all purpose or cake) flour
• 1 T of vanilla caster sugar
• 1teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Drop into the centre

• One large organic egg

With a wooden spoon slowly beat in

• 1 1/4 cups (185mls) of buttermilk
• 30g of butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon of orange blossom water

Heat your griddle pan and cook on a moderate heat, lightly greasing the pan and the inside of the pancake moulds, with a smear of butter.

When the bubbles appear on the top, ease the pancake out of the mould and flip with a spatula. Cook until lightly browned on this side too and keep warm between sheets of kitchen towel whilst finishing the batch of batter.

Serve with homemade yoghurt sweetened with thyme honey, slices of chopped banana and a simple compote of berries cooked down gently with a little sugar and the juice of half an orange.

OMG! The sun is shining! Not only is it shining today, it shone yesterday and the day before too, I have the sunburn to prove it. This morning it is streaming in through my kitchen window. ( Oops. My very dirty kitchen window. Need to clean that. I’ll put it on the list of things to do on a non-sunshiney day. )

The momentary twinge that is trying to tell me I’m overreacting is firmly banished. It is the African part of me that is used to 8 month summers. Here in England you cannot afford to be nonchalant about sunshine. While you’re busy playing it cool, that was it! Summer! Been and gone. Never mind, there’s always next year.

Well I don’t intend to be caught out again this year. The sun is shining, I’m smiling and my blog is working thanks to the amazing Andrea. I know I’ve been a little scarce and I blame it entirely on blogging technology, which was matrix-like sucking the very life out of me. Luckily Andrea was on hand to lend much needed technical support. Okay, technically not support as she actually just did it all for me, but the point is that it was I, me, moi that had the brilliant idea of enlisting her aid in the first place.

Feeling enthused, I’m starting my day off with one of my favourites, a banana lassi. In winter I just blend up yoghurt, banana, honey and cinnamon. In summer I add some fresh mint from the pot on my windowsill and instead of powdered cinnamon I use a cinnamon quill to infuse it with a touch of spice.

This is a super healthy start to the day and super simple too. I use organic live yoghurt, local honey which has a very delicate flavour, but rich undertones with an almost meady alcoholic quality, a fairtrade banana and homegrown mint. I throw them all in the blender and give it a whizz. The honey scent wafts out first and seems to underscore the smell of the banana and mint.

I pour it into a glass but can’t resist a quick taste test straight out of the blender. Of course, this leaves me with yoghurt all down my t-shirt. I quickly wipe it clean with a damp dishcloth. Did I say clean? I don’t want to know what the dishcloth has already been used for this morning. T-shirt and dishcloth go in the washing machine and I give my lassi a quick stir with a fragrant cinnamon quill. I leave it to infuse for a minute while I change my t-shirt and try to convince my daughter to put suncream on before school. Mission accomplished. Back to breakfast.

You can drink this delicious cocktail as a milkshake or add it to your granola or cereal. And if you don’t like your morning shakes too thick, thin it down with a little milk or some fresh squeezed OJ.

Mmmm. Despite the fact that my perfect bikini body is still a work in progress, with completion being months ( perhaps longer ) away, I feel fabulously healthy inside and out. Re-invigorated, I decide I might even get in a post today!

Happy summer everyone!