OK, I know 1. its been a while ...I'll update on that in a seperate post (hopefully later this week) 2. The image is strawberry cheesecake and not the afore mentioned Chocolate and Cranberry cheesecake. But anyway, why am I writing about cheesecake on the blog ?...The explanation....earlier this year I was 'discovered' on twitter by a great networking group called 'Mums the Boss'. One of the key pillars of their strategy (as Argos would have said), amongst it has to be said lots of other fabulous things such as raising awareness of charities and supporting business set ups and Mums working from home, is baking cakes ! (Yum) To celebrate this, they are organising a Christmas Baking Carnival http://www.mumstheblog.co.uk/2009/12/07/christmas-baking-carnival/ , the idea being that everyone blogs about their favourite Christmas cake and da daar...12 Bakes of Christmas....
I never baked...end of .. whatever I tried it just wasn't right, they flopped, they burst and covered the oven with gue or I forgot about them and they burnt. Until the arrival of my trusty friend the Aga. As part of educating me into how to use the Aga I went on a number of demonstration days - they are fab (even if you don't have Aga I would recommend them as you get to learn loads of recipes and eat lots of yummy food). One of the demonstrations was 'Christmas Made Easy', this to me previously meant do an Ocado shop and anything they don't have buy from M&S...oh how my cooking life was about to change ! It actually was easy and not too time consuming and the things that were time consuming you enjoyed doing anyway. So here is my Christmas Cheesecake recipe that even has the approval of my M-i-L who doesn't do deserts, just has a mouthful of everyone else's, so it can't be that bad! Hope you enjoy !
WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEESE CAKE WITH CRANBERRIES
(Serves 6)
150g chocolate digestive biscuits, crumbled
50g butter
2 tubs of ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
200g white chocolate
300g fresh cranberries
120g caster sugar
1. Crumble chocolate digestives
2. Melt butter in a pan and add crumbled biscuits
3. Place biscuit mix into the bottom of a 20cm round spring form tin and pop in fridge to chill
4. Melt the chocolate
5. In another bowl, beat together the ricotta cheese and the eggs and then fold in the melted chocolate
6. Pour mixture on to of biscuit base
7. Bake for 30-35 minutes until or until set at around* 160 to 180 degrees or on the floor of a baking oven for the Aga
8. Whilst the cheesecake is baking place the cranberries in a pan with the sugar and cook gently until soft. Take off the heat and allow to cool
9. Pour the cranberry mix on top of the baked cheesecake and when cool release the sides of the tin
10 Serve with a little blob of cream - whichever takes your fancy...lush !
