Well, it’s spring and the chickens here have ramped up egg production to the point where I almost need to be making more cheesecakes just to keep on top of them! And as I’ve experimented with dried fruit powders in the past, the time had most definitely come to experiment with a more. Having both mango powder and passionfruit powder in the cupboard, and a guest staying who is allergic to mango, it seemed pretty logical to use passionfruit.
A note on the fruit powders. These are Honeyberry’s freeze dried fruit powders, purchased through whatever online retailer floats your boat. I realise that I need to make that distinction as I’ve also got amchoor in the cupboard and while that is a mango powder, it would give a very different flavouring to a cheesecake. Though I’m tempted to try it…
As we’re in the season for experimentation, my base expert has been rather taken with the idea of running the biscuit base up the sides of the tin as you’ll see in the photo above. Yes, this gives you a rather biscuit-heavy corner around where the base meets the sides, but overall a very successful experiment.
So, quick spin around the ingredients, Clive, then back to me.
Ingredients
For the base…
- Plain flour
- Butter
- Sugar
- Oats
- Crystalised ginger
- Green cardamom
- Coriander seeds
For the cheesecake mix
- 4 tubs Creamfields cream cheese
- 1 tub Marscapone
- 300ml tub Sour Cream
- 9 oz caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3 tablespoons passionfruit powder.
For the curd
- Flesh of 6 passionfruit
- 75g caster sugar
- 50g butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp passionfruit powder
Method
Oven to 180°C, and we’ll begin. Grab a 9″ springform baking tin, the kind you’ve used many times before following these recipes.
The base is, I have to admit, a bit of a black art that my wife has mastered. Essentially you’re making a crumble topping type mix, blitzing it a little finer, and then pressing it into place lightly. Too hard and you end up with a crust that’s near-impervious to knives and will crack unpredictably as soon as you wave a blade near it. Too light and it just crumbles away. So yeah. Quantities are very much “by eye” which I realise isn’t very helpful. You might find some clues elsewhere on the blog if you look at some of the other recent cheesecake recipes? (Actually, I’ve just looked back and there isn’t. Next time. Next time I promise I’ll do better with the base).
The key thing here is the flavourings. After a quick bit of research we put together a spice blend that would compliment passionfruit. Ginger, coriander, green cardamom. The crystalised ginger was chucked into the blender and the murder blades did their thing, the coriander and cardamom were run through the spice grinder and then added, not huge amounts of either, just enough to taste. Long story short, if the base tastes like an interesting biscuit before you’ve baked it, you’re on to a winner.
Add to the 9″ spring-form baking tin, lightly press up the sides, try to keep the amount around that bottom edge to a minimum.
Into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile…
Nothing particularly tricky about this step, Standard issue cheesecake recipe. In fact this is the most basic you could do and gives the best results for adding whatever flavourings you desire. Cream cheese, sugar, marscapone into a big bowl and mix til smooth and blended. Then add in the eggs, repeat. The original recipe I followed all those years ago has the eggs going in one at a time, but I’ve long since stopped doing that. Crack all 4 of them in there, mix them til smooth and blended again. Now’s where we divert a little from the usual routine.
In another bowl (I know, won’t you think of the poor soul doing the washing up!) mix together the sour cream and the passionfruit powder. The stuff is weirdly hydrophobic so you’ve got to be careful and thorough to mix without ending up with lumps. Once you’ve got that, add the contents of this bowl to the one you first thought of, and combine thoroughly. Job done. Give it a taste, should be delicious at this point.
Your base should now be cooked, pour this lot into the lovely biscuit shell awaiting you. Back in the oven, bake for 53 minutes. Weirdly precise, I know. Your timings may vary depending on your oven. I found after the by-now-well-established 48 minutes mine usually needs that the centre still had far too much wobble for my liking. So it got an extra 5 minutes. I put this down to the biscuit insulation around the edge of the pan and the heat not conducting as it usually would. See, science!
After that time is up, switch off the oven, crack the door open a little with a wooden spoon, and allow to cool for a few hours.
And while that’s happening, you’ve got time to make the topping.
Much discussion was had around topping. White chocolate would work as a flavouring, so if you wanted to make a white chocolate ganache please feel free. I settled on a passion fruit curd to boost the passion fruitiness of the overall concoction. And here I freely admit, I bowed to an expert.
Halve the recipe you’ll find if you search online for Nigella Lawson’s Passionfruit curd. I used 2 eggs rather than 1 egg and 1 yolk, largely because just 1 egg white isn’t enough to make a useful quantity of meringues. The only addition I made was a teaspoon of the passiofruit powder in with the sugar and egg mix, just for luck.
A good covering for the top of the cheesecake was roughly 2/3 of the quantity of curd produced, so the rest went with some freshly baked bread the next day in some sarnies as we were off to see The UK Pink Floyed Experience down at the Cambridge Corn Exchange and wanted to eat on the way. They are, by the way, a fantastic band and their current tour touches every single one of Pink Floyd’s 15 studio albums. Very highly recommended. Put your topped cheesecake in the fridge and leave it overnight.
And there you have it. A truly delicious, very seasonally appropriate, dish.
Reviews from the kids? “Well, I wasn’t convinced at first but I think it might be my new favourite now.” “Didn’t understand why you wouldn’t just make a Mars Bar cheesecake but this is pretty good.” and “Yeah, wasn’t as good as the Mojito but it’s not bad.”
Enjoy!
