Those Cakes We Like … Are Cheesy Romantics At Heart

It’s February, which means two things:

1. January is finally over, the light is starting to return, and spring is almost in sight.

2. It’s the time of the year when romance is everywhere and we’re all being encouraged to spend a ton of money to show someone that we love them (we should really be demonstrating our love all the time, not on one specific day, but I guess the card/gift/candy companies gotta make a buck somehow).

If you intend to celebrate Valentine’s Day (or any other celebrations where you want to make someone feel special) then I’m here to help you with a recipe that looks stunning but is deceptively easy to make. And the best bit? You don’t even need to use your oven. This recipe can be made using just a stove top or microwave, a whisk, and your fridge. This month, we’re making a cheesecake. Specifically, a no-bake, white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake.

Cheesecake is an ancient delicacy, popular in ancient Greece before being adopted by the Roman empire as its imperial reach extended into Greece and beyond. Cheesecake recipes have been discovered which date back as far as 500 BCE (no, I have no desire to attempt to recreate ancient cheesecake, I suspect our culinary hygiene practices have moved on considerably since then). Cato the Elder left us the gift of three ancient cheesecake recipes which were used for religious purposes, which, considering standard Roman religious practice, probably meant they were offerings to various Gods or emperors. One of these recipes, the placenta cake, most closely resembles a modern cheesecake in that it had a separate, baked crust (please note, this cake did not contain actual placenta, instead it was the origin for the biological term as it was noticed that the human placenta resembled the texture of the cake — you can probably blame Galen for that one).

Cheesecake has been known by its current name since the 15th century but did not appear in its modern form until the 18th century, when the yeast in the older recipes began to be replaced with beaten eggs, giving it a more dessert-like taste. Early modern cheesecakes would have included things like currants, various forms of alcohol, orange flower or rose water, and spices such as nutmeg. Interestingly, despite the association of America with the famous New York cheesecake, which is a baked variety, the no-bake variety which I am about to share with you actually originated in the USA after the invention of American cream cheese in 1872 by one William Lawrence of Chester, New York. This version involves a set mixture of cream cheese, heavy cream, and sugar atop a buttery biscuit (or cookie) base. The base can be any of a variety of biscuits/cookies, with popular choices including graham crackers, digestive biscuits (found in the British section of most large grocery stores), ginger biscuits, or shortbread. I tend to choose a base that I feel will best compliment the flavours I’m using for my cheesecake, in this case, I’ve opted for shortbread.

My family’s shortbread recipe can be found here if you wish to bake your own cheesecake base.

For those of you who have to be carbohydrate aware like me, your carb count for this recipe is 30.8 g per serving, or 369.6 g for the whole cheesecake. This is definitely an occasional treat, not a daily indulgence.

Electronic kitchen scales

Stand mixer or electric hand whisk and large mixing bowl

Medium mixing bowl, heat proof/microwaveable

Bain-marie (or place your heatproof bowl on top of a pan of hot water — be careful to ensure there is a gap for steam to escape), or microwave

Deep sided 8 inch cake tin, preferably springform

Star shaped piping nozzle

1-2 piping bags

300g shortbread

150 g unsalted butter

250g white chocolate (you’ll need another 100 grams white chocolate for the decoration)

500g cream cheese

100g confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

300 ml heavy cream

250 g raspberries (fresh is ideal, but frozen will also work)

150 ml heavy cream

½ tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp confectioner’s sugar

100g white chocolate

12 raspberries (fresh or frozen)

10 g freeze dried raspberries (chocolate curls or strands would also work here)

Smash up your shortbread. You can choose your own method for this — putting it in a freezer bag and whacking it with a rolling pin is always a great stress reliever. You want reasonably small crumbs, but not dust. Melt your butter on the stove top or in the microwave and combine the smashed up shortbread and melted butter in the cake tin. Mix until well combined and then press down to form a flat base no more than ¼ of an inch thick. Chill the base in the refrigerator whilst you make the cheesecake.

In your mixing bowl or stand mixer whisk together your cream cheese, heavy cream, vanilla and confectioner’s sugar until it forms stiff peaks.

Set aside whilst you melt your white chocolate. My preferred method for melting white chocolate is the bain-marie as white chocolate burns ridiculously easily in the microwave. If you do decide to microwave it then do so on a medium-low heat and make sure you use short bursts, I’d suggest starting with 1 minute and reducing to 30 seconds as it starts to melt.

Whisk the white chocolate into your cheesecake mix and then carefully fold through the raspberries.

Pour your cheesecake mix over your buttery biscuit base, smooth it out, and gently press it down using the back of a spoon. Now pop it into the refrigerator to chill for 5-6 hours. Clean the dishes you’ve just used, you’ll need the stand mixer or whisk and mixing bowls again later.  Now go watch a movie or two, or spend some time browsing Your Wonkette. I’d suggest chatting with your fellow Wonkers, but we all know comments are not allowed.

~ 5-6 hours later~

Using your stand mixer or electric whisk, whisk your heavy cream, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract together until it forms stiff peaks. Melt your remaining (100 grams) white chocolate.

Carefully remove your cheesecake from the cake tin. Scatter your chosen decoration over the top of the now set cheesecake. Using a spoon, or a piping bag with the very tip cut off to make a tiny hole, drizzle the melted white chocolate across the top of the cheesecake, repeat at right angles. Using your star nozzle and another piping bag, pipe 12 rosettes of your whipped cream around the outside of the cheesecake. If you wish to add some more height you could pipe a second, smaller rosette on top of the first ones. Place a raspberry on top of each rosette. Stand back, admire your work, then place the cheesecake back in the refrigerator until it is required.

This cheesecake can be kept refrigerated for up to 3 days.

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