I love baked cheesecakes, I much prefer them to the no-bake variety They have more body and taste much more indulgent, with their velvety texture. I’ve recently made a blueberry cheesecake for someone at work, so I have a bit of practise with them.
Neapolitan nouveau
For this showstopper I decided to the make something with a twist. I like the ideas that Nadiya and Ian had by creating flavours inspired by drinks or sweet, so I’m going to do something a little similar. The main inspiration was a the retro frozen dessert, a Neapolitan ice cream with a chocolate, vanilla and strawberry layer. To keep to the basic flavours seems a bit boring so to make them a little be more interesting, I am going to use the other retro ice cream flavours of mint choc chip, rum raisin and raspberry ripple. The rum raisin, and raspberry fillings were easier to get recipe references for, however the mint chocolate layer was a little harder to find. Most of the recipes I could find were American, and had artificial colour green to them. I had to dig around for a chocolate based filling, and then adapt it for my idea.
After a bit of reading there are a few variations on the type cheese to use for the filling of cheesecakes. It could be just the sole use of mascarpone, or cream cheese (like Philidepha) or a mixture of one of these with crème fraiche, double cream and or soured cream. It’s difficult to remember what I tasted before and what one taste better than another, so I’m going to use a different combination for each cheesecake.
Buttery biscuit base
When watching the show last Wednesday the bakers used either a biscuit or pastry base for the cheesecake. I don’t think I have ever had a pastry crust, in fact when I presented the idea to the fiance I was met with a look of disgust, and the word “Never! It’s biscuits and nothing else!”. Taking that comment to heart, I could only go with one option. All of the recipes I looked through, and what I would normally use, required digestive biscuits. Usually I would buy these from the shop, but this being bake off, I couldn’t get away with that, so I chose to make a large batch to use for all the bases.
These biscuits are quite frugal when it comes to making them, and thankfully I had most of the ingredients in the cupboard. The main dry ingredients are wholemeal flour, mixed with oatmeal and sugar. The oatmeal required was the medium grain, however I thought that this would make them a bit more oaty and grainy than I would of liked, so I halved the required amount the the finer grain too. Plus this meant I could use them both up, and make more room in the already packed baking cupboard! The dry ingredients are then rubbed into butter, and once the breadcrumb stage is reached, milk is added to bind it altogether. The dough was then wrapped and packed into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes to harden up.
Once the dough is firm enough to roll out, I did so and cut out the biscuits for baking. In order to get them nice, crunchy and fully dried out, they had to be baked for 15-18 minutes and then cooled before bashing and mixing with the melted butter for the bases. Each base was then baked again, to ensure it was hard and crispy, before pouring over the fillings. I even brushed egg wash over a few to ensure it didn’t get soggy by the filling, similar to what you would do for a pastry case. When all the bases were ready it was time ot get started on the first of many layers.
Pink layer
In a true neapolitan ice-cream this is usually strawberry flavoured, I don’t mind strawberries, but I much prefer raspberries and they are in season at the moment, so I’ve decided to go these instead. For this filling I used solely mascarpone, and to get the vital pink colour I made a raspberry coulis that could also be used for the ripple and serving. The coulis was pretty simple, it was just a case of boiling some water with sugar, lime juice and adding some frozen raspberries to it until they soften. Once they were nice and squishy I blended them with the stick blender until smooth and left it to cool while the rest of the filling was prepped and the oven heated up.
On top of the base of the biscuits, I placed some fresh raspberries in circles, in the hope that when you cut into the baked dessert you would also get a nice pattern with the fruit. This hope was soon dashed when I poured the filling over the top, making them go all over the place! Next time I think I’ll pour a little of the filling on the base first so that the fruit has something to stick too. I used some of the remaining coulis to decorate the top with a design I found on pintrest; Squeezing little dots of the coulis into circles on the top of the cake and dragging a cocktail stick through the. You are then left with a pretty heart shaped pattern, I just hoped it would stay this pretty after an hour long bake.
As well as experimenting with the various fillings that can be used as the base of the cheesecakes, I also decided to try the two different methods used for baking them. One method is the water-bath, which helps to keep an even temperature around the cake while it bakes. The other is a dry bake, with just the cake in the oven, and no water-bath. This raspberry cheesecake along with the rum and Raisin flavour were baked with the water-bath method. In order to ensure that the water doesn’t get to the cake, or more importantly the base, the tin needs to be wrapped prior to baking (and before you put the filling in). Once everything is ready and the filling is ready to pour, the tin is placed in the roasting tin, so that you don’t have to do any needless moving of the cake tin when its full! After the filling is in and it’s ready to bake, boiling water is poured into the roasting tin, so that it comes half way up the side of the tin, then bake.
White layer
While the pink payer was baking I moved onto the white, boozy, layer. For this layer I could have gone with the family favourite of lemon and raisin, but I wanted to tart it up slightly, and what better way to do this than with a splash of alcohol. Three days before baking this adult treat, I soaked all the raisins I had in the cupboard (about 200g) with a nice healthy lashing of spiced dark rum.
For this recipe I thought I would try using one of the previous bake off contestant recipes, and found one by Jo Wheatley. Her filling uses cream cheese and sour cream, with half of the sour cream going on top of the baked cheesecake 10 minutes before the end of the bake. It was an interesting concept but I’m to sure what it was supposed to add to the cake. For the baked decoration on this cake I wanted to replicate the heart design of the raspberry ripple, so I decided to make a caramel, with addition of a little rum. As you can see from the pictures, this didn’t go as well as I would have liked, probably because I didn’t leave it to cool down for long enough. Instead of a nice even pattern, I was left with something that looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Oh well, on with the third…
Brown layer
Other than the tweaks to the recipe for the raspberry laker, this was the layer I felt was more tricky. I wanted a mint infused filling, that reminded you of the ice cream but a bit more subtle, so that over-riding flavour was the chocolate. For this recipe I found an American one, that I decided to adapt. The base for this filling was cream cheese, and double cream, mixed with some luxurious melted chocolate. The first this I decided to change with this recipe was the amount of sugar as it seemed like an awful lot, however looking back this may have been to sweeten up the chocolate content. The Chocolate needed to be melted with the cream and some cocoa, however what I was left with was not pourable and did not taste good. Instead, after going out to buy more chocolate, I chose to melt the chocolate first, then mix in the cream so that I was left with a pourable ganache.
This was then added to whipped up cream cheese, eggs and sugar. For the mint infusion I added freshly chopped mint and some home mint sugar syrup. The decoration on the top of this cake was to use of the chocolate chips that were used inside the cake too. The recipe calls for Nordstrom Makers Dark Chocolate Mint candies, which being in the UK i didn’t have, so instead I used regular chocolate chips.
This last layer was to be baked using the dry bake method, without the use of the water bath
Bakes the difference
All of the bakes needed to be cooked until there was still a little wobble in the middle of the cake. For the ones cooked in the water bath this seemed to take a little longer than the dry bake method. I have to remove the water-bath bakes from the oven so that I could continue with the other bakes, so in order for them not to cool down too quickly and crack I left them in the waterbaths. The chocolate cheesecake however I took out of the oven, forgetting about the cracking (as it was late) and predictably it did crack! Damn!
Layer it up
Usually the presentation stage of the showstopper doesn’t really worry me however with each cake looking slightly different, I had my doubts on how to make these look good, let alone stand on three tiers!
First I tried using straws, like they did on the show, with near disastrous results. Pushing them into the raspberry layer lead to my thumb going into the filling. When I tried to balance the first layer onto it there was no way it was going to hold.
My next option was short lived. I had some plastic cake dowels, but they were too long and I was worried I would have more than my thumb in the cake if I tried push down on them.
The last idea I came up with was something that I spied out of the corner of my eye, shot glasses! I placed on in the middle of the raspberry and the rum raisin layer, after having to scoop out some of the filling first and voila! I had a slightly messy (especially on the bottom layer) 3 tiered cheesecake, that balanced long enough to take a few pictures.
Saving grace
Thankfully, especially when it comes to overall presentation, i am not on the bake off, and as such I could play with my presentation skills. Instead of the tiered versions, I used the remaining coulis and caramel to decorate the slices. For the chocolate layer I added a whipped cream, with added chopped mint.
In hindsight I now think that I should have just cut the biscuit dough to fit the cake tins. I could then have used the same dough to make a high crust around the sides to prevent any filling from escaping.
Using the waterbath method created a creamier texture to the bake, and the edges were not as coloured as it would have been with a dry bake. Leaving them to cool in the waterbath, lead to the edge of the bases to get a little soggy, but this may have been a poor seal with the tin foil. The chocolate bake was definitely drier and more dense, and closer to the regular baked cheesecake. I prefer this latter texture, however I found the chocolate a bit too rich,and I couldn’t taste the mint. I’ll have to tweak this one, although I went down well with friends and family. The Rum and Raisin was my favourite, although I think it needed a bit longer in the oven. The overall favourite was the raspberry cheesecake. I’d be interested to see if what the results would be if I baked them all using the opposite methods, but I have had enough cheesecake now for at least a few months!
