When you try to make it in France where there is a distinct lack of soft cream cheese, and those that are on the shelf have garlic or herbs added to them.Garlic flavoured cheesecake - too avante garde for me I'm afraid.
So this is my no baking required 'how to make cheesecake without cream cheese' recipe.
And my pudding of choice yesterday since I did not get to eat the salmon I wanted for dinner.
French Creme-Patissiere Cheesecake
500ml milk
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
75g sugar
60g plain flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
120g fromage frais
zest and juice from 1 lemon
80g of biscuit for a base - either digestives or in France 'speculoos'
Take a cup of milk from the half litre and set the rest to boiling in a large saucepan.
Into a bowl sift the flour, and add the beaten whole egg and yolks to a well in the centre, combine well, then add the cup of milk gradually, whisking continuously until you get a smooth lump free mixture.
Reduce the heat under the milk to a simmer, then add the mixture to the hot milk, while stirring constantly and simmer until the mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and add the fromage frais, zest and juice of the lemon and vanilla, stirring all the time.
Set aside to cool slightly.
Smash up your biscuits of choice - if you have them, ginger nuts go really really well in this - and layer some in the bottom of your dish. I like to do mine in individual portions and for this I am using glass tea light holders.
Spoon out some of the mixture, add another biscuit layer and then some more of the mixture.
These are my raspberries that I picked for the bakewell tart but did not have enough of to make a jam so I have made a quick coulis instead with the leftover frozen in an ice cube tray to use another time.
To make the coulis just throw the raspberries in pan, with a splash of water, add a couple of tablespoons of sugar and boil away until you get a thickish jelly.
Today (Friday) is all about the outdoors because the sun is out in force, and my project for today is to get the spare room habitable for our guests at the weekend. That means rugs outside to air, dusting, window cleaning and fresh clean bedding. It makes it sound as though the spare room is a real slop house, but as we don't really use it inbetween visitors I would hate for it to smell musty and fusty so it always gets a good clean before people arrive.
