A Romantic Raspberry Cheesecake, for Valentine’s Day…

…or, indeed, any day. This is so good you’ll want to make it again, and again, and again,

When I heard that  Avonmore were launching a new Dessert Cream, and running a competition to find the perfect Valentine’s Day dessert, I knew immediately that this treat was The One, so to speak. I can’t claim any praise for inventing this recipe – it was thought up by a very good friend of mine from college. We were so obsessed with this cheesecake that we would make it at least once a month, and devour it. Not only that, we’d also confer to see which of us had fewer housemates due home that night…fewer housemates meant fewer people to share it with, you see. Greed is good, my friends. Greed is good.

Aside from being utterly delicious, this dessert is ludicrously easy to make. It’s a no-bake, just-chill cheesecake – crushed biscuits are mixed with butter for the base, and the easily-whisked together topping is dolloped lazily on top. So far, so what? Well there are a few little twists lurking beneath the surface which take this simple sweet to the next level of lusciousness. Firstly, instead of sandy, everyday Digestives, we use Café Noir biscuits, with their sweet, coffee icing, as the base. Secondly, we add another layer of interest by spooning some crushed tinned raspberries on top of the biscuits, before finishing with the cream-cheese topping. The squashed, syrupy berries slowly ooze their delectable flavour into the biscuits, adding a sweetly-sticky, raspberry scent which ties the whole dish together. Anyone who’s ever eaten this has immediately asked for the recipe, which I think speaks for itself.

Finally, many of you will have noticed that my photo skills are rather lacking – I blame my camera but really I lack the requisite patience, and usually want to hoover up whatever I’ve just cooked instead of  having to delicately style and photograph it  - but that is thankfully about to change as I’ve collaborated with a photographer friend of mine, the wonderful Simon Curran of iamacosmonaut. With his infinite patience and mad camera skillz, Simon produced some truly dreamy food shots, which I am delighted to be able to share with you today. The styling was mostly done by yours truly – with some help and inspiration from a friend – and I’m thrilled with the results. I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed shooting them, and hopefully this is the tip of the iceberg  for future collaborations!

Romantic Raspberry Cheesecake – serves 1-8

Ingredients:

For the base:

150g Cafe Noir biscuits (i.e. 1.5 packets)

75g butter, melted

For the topping:

200g creme fraiche

200g cream cheese

1 tbsp of Avonmore Fresh Dessert Cream

lemon juice

icing sugar

2 x tins of raspberries, either in their own juice or in syrup

Method:

1. Begin by crushing the biscuits, either in a food processor or the old-fashioned way, in a plastic bag and with a heavy implement. If using the processor, be careful not to process too much – you want crumbs, not dust.

2. In a bowl, mix the crushed biscuits with the melted butter until thoroughly combined. Press into the bottom of a 23cm cheesecake tin.

3. Take one tin of raspberries, open and drain off the juice. Plunge a fork into the tin and furiously whisk to roughly break up the raspberries. Dollop spoonfuls of the resulting muddled berries on top of the biscuit  base, smoothing and spreading as you go with the back of a dessert/soup spoon.

4. In a second bowl, mix together the creme fraiche, cream and cream cheese. Add a spritz of lemon juice, mix thoroughly and taste. If it’s a little tart, add a small amount of sieved icing sugar and whisk it in. Taste again and adjust as necessary.

5. To your cream cheese mixture, add the second tin of drained raspberries, and mix. You can either lazily marble it through, which looks very pretty, or stir more energetically for a uniformly pink-hued topping. Dollop on top of the be-raspberried base and refrigerate for 4 or so hours or, better still, overnight.

6. Serve with some fresh raspberries, pour over some Avonmore Dessert Cream, and commence gorging.

Some provisos: the topping is quite sloppy, so it does need to be made in advance, unless you’re happy with a cheesecake that doesn’t slice beautifully. No matter, it’s easier to get it done in advance anyway. Secondly, if using regular single cream, just use 3/4 of a tablespoon, as it’s thinner than the Fresh Dessert Cream I’ve specified here.

Nutella Cheesecake

Once again, I’ve been neglecting my blog, and my readers, if there are any left. Consider this recipe a culinary white flag, and accept my apologies. Today’s nugget of deliciousness comes to you courtesy of the inimitable Nigella Lawson, and is featured in her newest book, Nigellissima. I caught the Christmas episode of the TV series cacompanying the book, in which she suggested serving this cheesecake as part of an Italian-inspired feast, and I was smitten. I adore hazelnuts and am obsessed with chocolate; in short, I had to make this.

Many people presume that making a cheesecake is a daunting affair involving waterbaths, dangerously liquid fillings and all manner of kitchen trickery, but this honestly couldn’t be easier. There is no baking involved – you simply throw the ingredients for the base into a food processor before nonchalantly pressing it into a tin and dolloping a cream-cheese and Nutella mixture on top. Honestly, the hardest part is coaxing the surprisingly semi-solid Nutella out of the jar. Well, that, and not eating the whole thing yourself…

I knew once I’d licked the filling off the beaters while making this that I was onto a winner, but to say it went down a treat at a recent get-together is an understatement. We didn’t bother with bowls but, rather primitively, attacked the unmoulded cake with spoons. Every time I walked past it in the kitchen another chunk had gone missing, and I was on the receiving end of an irate text from my friend’s husband the next day when he realised I’d taken the leftovers home with me.

Nigella instructs us to make the base in a food processor, but if you don’t have one – like me – don’t let that stop you. Simply melt the butter and 25g of Nutella together, and mix with the biscuits which you’ve crushed manually in a plastic bag – I like to use a large tin of tomatoes for the job, it’s wonderfully cathartic – before pressing into your tin and proceeding as normal. You can, of course, toast and chop your hazelnuts yourself, but seeing as Tesco have done all the hard work for you why not take advantage of it? You will be appalled at the amount of Nutella and cream cheese that goes into this, but life, as they say, is for living, and a small slice won’t kill you. It’s best served with a blob of whipped cream and a large dollop of self-control.

Nutella Cheesecake – serves 1-12

Ingredients: 

• 250g digestive biscuits
• 75g soft butter
• 400g Nutella (at room temperature)
• 500g cream cheese (at room temperature)
• 100g hazelnuts (toasted and chopped – as discussed you can buy them already toasted and chopped)
• 60g icing sugar

Method:

1. Break the digestives into the bowl of a  food processor, add the soft butter and a tablespoon of Nutella. Process until it starts to clump together. Add 25g of the hazelnuts and continue to pulse until the mixture resembles damp sand.

OR

Melt the butter and a tablespoon of Nutella together. Bash the biscuits in a clear plastic food bag with a rolling pin/tin of beans or tomatoes/your own crushing self-doubt until you have uniform crumbs. Add 25g of the hazelnuts into the biscuits and then stir in the melted butter/Nutella until it is thoroughly and evenly distributed.

2. Tip your biscuit mixture into a 23cm round springform tin and press down, using either your fingers or the back of a spoon. Put the tin in the fridge to chill while you make the topping.

3. For the topping, beat the cream cheese and sieved icing sugar together until smooth. Add the remaining Nutella and mix until combined.

4. Take the tin out of the fridge and dollop the Nutella mixture on top of the base. Spread evenly and top with the chopped, toasted hazelnuts. Put the finished cheesecake back in the fridge for 4 hours, or overnight.

Note: This is best served straight from the fridge as it will be easier to cut. I didn’t get to snap a photo of my own cheesecake so the picture above is from Nigella’s website. Credit is due to her photographer and most certainly not to me.

Spicy Vegetarian Chili

I’m of the firm belief that everyone needs a good chili recipe up their sleeve. Cheap, quick, easy – and with a healthy dose of spice – what could be better? The fact that this chili is loaded with vegetables and beans means that it is very nutritious indeed; the culinary version of a 5k run, allowing you to feel smugly virtuous about doing something that’s good for yourself as you spoon a second helping into your bowl. I’ll gloss over the fact that I tend to top mine with dollops of deliciously fatty sour cream, sharp cheddar cheese and crushed-up salty tortilla chips…a girl’s gotta have something, right?

I spied this particular recipe on Joy the Baker’s site, and quickly bookmarked it. Its first outing a couple of weeks later was when I made it for a vegetarian friend, in a fit of  carniverous, what-am-I-supposed-to-feed-you-people desperation. Halfway through making it I realised that perhaps serving an allegedly spicy chili that I hadn’t even road-tested to a new friend whose Dad was Mexican and therefore – in my mind at least – had been chowing  down on jalapeno peppers since infancy probably wasn’t such a good idea. In any event, she declared it to be delicious as she blithely spooned away, my brothers fanning their mouths in unison. If that’s not a gold star for this recipe, I don’t know what is.

As usual, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I’ve meddled with this recipe. I don’t add stock, or frozen corn (I like corn on the cob, but not frozen/canned corn as a vegetable. Hey, I’m complex), and sub cannellini beans for the chickpeas. I also use hot chili powder, and if I can’t find steak seasoning I just add rock salt, freshly ground black pepper and dried chili flakes. The original recipe is here if you want to give it a go – if not, my altered version is set out below. I like it quite spicy, but feel free to use milder chili powder/barbecue sauce if you’re a bit of a spice wimp, as I once was.

The original version claims to feed eight people, but three friends and I scarfed the whole pot down on Friday night, so I would say it feeds four to six, depending on who you’re feeding and their levels of greed. Like all spicy, stew-y dishes, this only gets better the longer it sits, and is glorious reheated the next day (and the next, and the next…), smeared onto a tortilla wrap with guacamole, sour cream and cheddar cheese, or plonked on top of a baked potato. If you’ve got a large enough pot you can also make double the recipe and freeze it for a later date. Just make it, I beg you – you won’t regret it.

Spicy Vegetarian Chili – serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 red pepper, diced

1 green/yellow pepper, diced

1 courgette, diced

3 small cloves of garlic, diced

1 cup beer (or vegetable stock if you like)

3 heaping tablespoons steak seasoning (or a mix of rock salt, black pepper and chili flakes if you’re stuck)

1 tablespoon of hot chili powder

1 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/3 cup barbecue sauce (I use the Reggae Reggae jerk/barbecue sauce)

1 x can black beans, rinsed

1 x  can kidney beans, rinsed

1 x can cannellini beans, rinsed

2 x can chopped tomatoes

Method:

1. In a large pot, heat the olive oil.  Add the onions and saute until translucent and slightly browned.  Add the peppers and courgette and cook for four or five minutes, until they begin to soften.

2. Add garlic and all of the spices to the vegetables.  Cook for two minutes.

3. Deglaze the pan by adding a cup of beer or stock to the pot. Stir and scrape the bits off the bottom of the pot.  Once the beer has stopped sizzling, add the barbecue sauce, beans and diced tomatoes.  Bring to a low boil and cook for about 15 minutes.

4. Serve in a bowl, topped with sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, and salted tortilla chips. Keeps for about 6 days, if you can resist its siren call for that long.

(The image below is care of Penzeys Spices – my phone wasn’t playing ball and refused to upload the picture I wanted. Curse you, technology…)