Thursday 3 January 2013

Caramel Cheesecake

I made a yummy cheesecake for New Year's dinner, starting from this recipe (I've made the original lemon version twice before, and it's fab!).
Here's the modified recipe:

For the biscuit base

30 speculoos biscuits
75g butter

For the filling

750g mascarpone cheese
100g brown sugar
100ml caramel sauce (or you could replace sugar + caramel sauce by 200ml caramel, made by dissolving 200g brown sugar in 200ml water)
a pinch of cinnamon

Preparation method

1. Brush the bottom of a 23cm springform cake tin with some of the melted butter.
2. Crush the biscuits and tip them into a bowl, add the melted butter and stir until well combined.
3. Tip the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin. Using the back of a spoon, gently push the crumbs from the centre outward, until smooth and level. This will form the base of the cheesecake. Chill in the fridge while making the filling.
4. For the filling, dissolve the sugar into the caramel sauce, with a bit of water if necessary (or make the caramel).
5. Mix the caramel and the mascarpone cheese in a bowl until well combined. Do not mix the mixture too much!!
6. Spoon the mixture into the tin on top of the chilled biscuit mixture and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
7. When ready to serve, unclasp the springform ring and ease out the cheesecake.

Tip

If you've over mixed the filling and ended up with "mascarpone soup" (like I did), leaving it in the fridge overnight won't help firming it up again. What you need to do is add gelatine:
1. Place 4.5 sheets of gelatine (or the appropriate quantity if you changed the amount of mascarpone, see here) under at least 3/4L of cold water in a bowl and leave it for 5 min.
2. Pat the gelatine dry.
3. Place it in a small quantity of warm water in a pot (I used about 100ml), and dissolve on low fire (don't bring to the boil).
4. Take off the fire and gradually add the filling to the gelatine (not the opposite - I don't know why this matters but apparently it does!).
5. Leave it to cool in the fridge for 2 hours (I put it in an ice bath before putting it in the fridge).
6. Tip it into the springform tin over the biscuit base (the filling should now be firm enough to not run everywhere), and smooth it with a spatula.
7. Leave it to chill for at least another 2 hours. And this should save your cheesecake without compromising the taste:)

Little note: During this whole operation I somehow got cheesecake in my hair! (of course this was right after washing my hair...). How does Brie Van De Kamp do it? ;)

I forgot to take a picture of the complete cheesecake, so here's what's left:

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