Vanilla and Raspberry Baked Cheesecake

Swirly indulgence! This is fun, beautiful and surprisingly easy to make, without all of the chilling time of a cold cheesecake. As a predominantly American recipe, I’d never baked a cheesecake before this, so me being me I did my research (…procrastination from an essay…). A million different recipes give almost too many options.persuading you that they behold the ultimate cheesecake recipe. So do you use cream, sour cream, mascapone, philiadelphia, any old soft cheese? Oh and you can water bath, electric mix, hand beat, overcook and undercook…I was overwhelmed so in the end I picked a recipe and adapted it to my own design – c’est la vie!

In the end, I was quite happy with how it turned out. It cracked on top and next time maybe a little less erratic swirling but it was super creamy and tasty. Also, I’ll be the first to admit that this was made entirely with ‘basics’ ingredients. So in the end this can’t have cost more than £4 or £5 – more expensive than buying a supermarket cheesecake I guess but so much tastier. Basics ingredients can prove to be an economical, tasty and perfectly acceptable range to bake with!

Ingredients

• 200g digestive biscuit
• 75g butter, melted
• 600g full-fat soft cheese
• 250g golden caster sugar
• 150g tub natural yogurt
• 3 medium eggs
• 50g plain flour
• 50g raspberries

Method

Take out a 20cm round springform tin fully grease with a little butter. Take out your frustrations on the biscuits by crushing them inside a zip-lock bag with a rolling pin. When crushed mix them with the melted butter. Use a fish slice or fine potato masher to push the biscuits into an even layer into the base of the cake tin and chill in the fridge for later.

Next, preheat the oven to 120C/100C fan. In a large mixing bowl beat the soft cheese with the sugar, getting in as much air as possible. Next beat in the yoghurt then the vanilla and the eggs one at a time, again fluff this up with lots of air.

Next microwave the raspberries with a little water for 1 minute. Crush them up then squeeze them through a sieve to create a puree minus the pips. Tip the cheesecake mix on top of the biscuit base and smooth over the top then put  random spoonfuls of raspberry on top. Swirl the dollops together with a sharp knife to make a cool pattern – Cooking light definitely explain it better.

Bake for 45 mins to an hour, then turn off the oven, leave the cake inside for another hour then cool at room temperature, then chill until serving.