Vanilla Cheesecake

This is my first time that i am baking a cheesecake. Cheese is actually not a favourite in our family. So i have not attempted it. I always liked to see a picture of the cheesecake with a biscuit layer in the bottom, creamy cheese in the middle and a mind blowing topping. But as nobody likes cheese, i never thought of baking this cake.

Recently i joined the baking partners group and the challenge for this month was "Baked Cheesecake". 

I thought i will give it a try. But the recipes had either some ingredients which i could not find here or not suitable for me. The main ingredient - Cheese, i searched a lot in stores, couldn't find and when i found one, it was costing huge. That's how i thought of making cream cheese on my own. You can find the recipe for Homemade Cream Cheese here.

At last i choose Basic Cheesecake and did some changes to the original recipe and came up with this awesome vanilla cheesecake. I took half of the quantity mentioned below to bake a small cheesecake. Also, i couldn't find good mangoes for my topping, so had to satisfy myself with a jam topping. But i must tell you, it tasted awesome. Even my family members (who doesn't like cheese) liked this cake so much and they told it is simply great.

Thanks to the Baking Partners for giving me this challenge. It was really a challenge for me to bake a Cheesecake and i did it great. I am happy to join this group of home bakers.

Ingredients

2 cup Cream Cheese
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla essence
1/2 cup Sugar
1 cup Digestive Biscuit (any biscuit of your choice)
1/4 cup Butter (melted)
1 tbsp Sugar

For topping:

3 tbsp Jam (any jam of your choice, I used mixed fruit jam)
Hot Water as required


Method

• Crush the biscuit in a food processor or mixer. Transfer it into a bowl.
• Add sugar and butter into it. Mix well using your hands to form fine crumbs.
• Grease a baking tin or a spring form baking tin. 
• Put the biscuit mix into it and spread it evenly in the bottom. Press it gently using the back of a spoon to form a nice even layer at the bottom of the pan.
• Pre-heat the oven at 170 degree Celsius in convection mode.
• Place the baking tin with biscuit layer in the oven for about 10 minutes.
• In the mean time, blend the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla essence and eggs (one at a time) using a electric hand beater.
• Pour the cream cheese batter into the baking tin, over the baked biscuit layer.
• Spread the batter evenly and place it in a bigger baking pan with hot water.
• The water level should be just 1 - 1/4 inch below the cake tin with the cheese cake batter.
• Keep this in the pre-heated oven at 170 degree Celsius for 60 minutes. Toothpick test cannot be done in this case. Just shake the tin a bit and if the centre is slightly wobbly, it means the cheesecake is done.
• Take off from oven and set aside to cool down completely.
• Keep it in the fridge for about 1 hour to chill.
• Later, take off from the baking tin.
• Mix jam with little hot water. Stir nicely and spread it on the cheesecake.
• Cut and serve it chilled.
• Enjoy!!!

Note:

1. Don't beat the cheese cake batter like you do for a normal cake, as the cheesecake won't set properly and the top portion of the cheesecake will crack.

Thanks for visiting

Happy Cooking!!