Vanilla Cheesecake

LOOK! No cracks!

This first picture isn't pretty, but I just had to prove that I made a cheesecake that didn't split open as it cooled - a rarity for me!

The recipe is a Gordon Ramsay one, which has only been published online in the Times, so is no longer available unless you are a subscriber. It's a fairly standard mix of cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla, on a digestive biscuit crumb base, and I originally chose it because it used the same amount of cream cheese (500g) and sour cream (300g) that I had leftover after Christmas baking one year! Add 200g sugar, 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons cornflour and a splash of vanilla extract, et voila! After an hour's baking at 150C, it is supposed to be golden brown on top, but I've never achieved that effect with this recipe - it stays pale and interesting.

Vanilla Cheesecake

In fact, after an hour the cheesecake is always still very wobbly, and usually I bake for a bit longer, but this time I decided to be more courageous and  switched off the oven. I left the cheesecake for 30 minutes in the closed oven, then ran a knife between the tin and the cheesecake to free it from the tin, and left it to cool completely in the oven with the door open slightly. I don't know if it was the shorter baking time, or freeing the cheesecake from the tin which stopped it cracking, but it's the first time I've made this particular recipe without the cracks appearing.

This is one of my favourite baked cheesecake recipes; the proportions of cream cheese, sour cream and eggs gives a lovely texture which isn't too heavy or claggy. The only criticism is that as a vanilla cheesecake, it's a little too sweet. Previously I've always made it as a lemon version, so hadn't really noticed how sweet it is, as the lemon has cut through the sugar.

Take your pick...
add strawberries, roasted rhubarb or chocolate sauce.

We have a variety of tastes in this family - CT eats hardly any fresh fruit, if he can avoid it, and is a chocoholic, while the rest of us like fruit, but don't always want the same fruit at the same time, or the same amounts of fruit in relation to cheesecake. To cater for everyone, I decided to leave the cheesecake plain, and offer strawberries, roast rhubarb or chocolate sauce as an accompaniment.

It's a long weekend, to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, so we felt deserving of a more luxurious dessert than I usually make. CT and FB are enjoying extra time to relax away from work, and Hubs and I, being retired, are carrying on as usual. We're not exactly anti-royalists, but we're not really celebrating or taking part in any organised events either; I tried to come up with a red, white and blue dessert, to stay with the spirit of things, but the rest of the family told me not to bother - taste was more important than looks to them!

I've just realised that Vanilla Cheesecake could be a contender for this month's Alpha Bakes Challenge - bake something with a 'V' in the name or ingredients list - but I'll  hold it in reserve for the moment, as I'd like to find something more interesting than V for Vanilla.