Simple uncooked cheesecake

 Base: bake half quantities of Clementine Gluten-free cake, divided into two 8 inch sandwich tins. Freeze one cake for another time.

Filling: whip 150ml cream until stiff. Separately, whip 200g cream cheese with 1 large tablespoon icing sugar (more if wished). The cream cheese will become thinner at first and then thicken up. When stiff, fold in the cream, 1 dessertspoon or more lemon zest and at least 3 large tablespoons of lemon curd.

Spread filling on base, drizzle with lemon curd, leave to set overnight in fridge.

An additional tweak: could add sour cream and lemon juice to make it more tangy.

Sugar-free lemon curd

2 tsp. unflavored  gelatin

1 1/4 cup lemon juice

5 eggs beaten

2/3 cup honey

1 stick butter plus 2 TBS butter  or ghee

 DIRECTIONS 

Put lemon juice in a pan and slowly warm on low heat.

In a mixing bowl add the eggs and honey and beat on slow speed.  Pour the egg mixture into the lemon juice and slowly bring to a boil increasing slowly to medium heat.  Make sure to stir the mixture at all times so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan.   Boil for one minute and remove the pan from the heat.

Add the gelatin to the lemon curd, mix and return to the heat and bring to a boil for 1 more minute.

Remove the pan from heat and add the butter.  Mix until all ingredients are well combined.

From the peaceful haven

Lemon curd

I have been making this lemon curd for over thirty years. The recipe is still on the same tatty bit of notepaper I used to write it down when my Swedish friend Margareta Espling came to stay with me in Kenya, when I was teaching in a village school.

It is my 'go to' comfort food.

The grated rind and juice of 4 large lemons.
1lb - 2 cups - of sugar
5 eggs, well beaten  - a mix of medium and large is probably best.
4oz - half a cup - of butter. Preferably Guernsey butter, because that is where I am now.

Mix all together in a large saucepan and heat gently, stirring constantly or the eggs coalesce.  The mixture will be runny for a long time, but when it thickens, pour it into jars and seal.

So simple.

I made some last night as a 'thank you' gift for colleagues - and have some left over, which is always a blessing. It took a couple of hours as I doubled the recipe, listened to a Bill Johnson talk online and generally pottered about, but oh!  So therapeutic after a very busy and stressful week.

Deliciousness in a jar....

Belinda's Baked Lemon Cheesecake

Belinda, Richard and Issy came to lunch today. Lovely to catch up with them and trade news, and lovely to eat this delicious cheesecake which Bel brought with her.

Baked lemon cheesecake.

Crust: Mix 85g flour, 40g fine polenta, 50g sugar and 85g butter (melted) all together. I also added a few drips of Sicilian lemon essence. Press into 9"/20cm springform tin. Bake at 150 fan oven for 35 mins til pale gold colour. Cool.



Filling Put these into a blender: 350g cream cheese,150g caster sugar, 4 med eggs,grated zest and juice of 2 lemons, 1 tsp vanilla extract. This will come out bigger than the one I made as I reduced quantities by a third. (200g cream cheese, 100g sugar, 2 large eggs, still 2 lemons - lovely lemony deliciousness.)

Pour over base. Bake for 30-40 mins until slightly risen and just set.

Heat some lemon curd (about 1/3 jar) and pour over cheese cake. Chill overnight.

(The recipe actually says bake for 30 mins, then cool for a few mins, then add 300ml soured cream to the top and bake for 10 more minutes. I didn't do this, as I preferred the lemon curd topping - up to you!)

The crust was quite hard... could try baking this without any crust at all for the gluten-free option.