One Hell of a Strawberry Cheesecake

We love cheesecake. Oh glorious, dense, creamy one...I want to drown my face in your calorific extravaganza. Or maybe not. Here's a recipe that's an adaptation of quite a few recipes I googled, mish-mashed together to suit the ingredients I have, and also scaled-up so that we could upgrade to our larger baking pan instead of the usual cake pan we use. Coz bigger is better baby, in the land of cheese. *Note this cheesecake is made in the tradition of typical New York and other baked cheesecakes; heavy on the cream, cheese and eggs with none of that light, fluffy no-bake gelatin set rubbish tyvm. In saying that have 000 on standby in case of cardiac arrest.
Recipe notes:
Also I'm writing this whilst it's baking and this time around we didn't use a water bath. A water bath is when you fill a larger pan with boiling water and drop your cake tin inside it then bake it.
Since the temperature will never exceed 100C within the water bath, you'll avoid raising the temperature too quickly which causes cracks and uneven browning of the cheesecake surface. Another benefit is that it'll never get too hot, and you'll avoid the sunken middle sydrome of a cheesecake that rises like a souffle only to sink down when it starts to cool. However what we found last time is that it needed so much longer to cook and this time around we're being impatient as well as realizing meh, who cares about some cracks if the Queen's not coming around for tea. But we'll see if we can avoid the cracking anyways without the water bath.

Also, a baked cheesecake can be an expensive cake to make (up there with true mudcakes, chocolate ganaches and anything with copious amounts of almond meal). With the ongoing drought in Australia pushing up prices of feed->livestock->livestock byproducts we're seeing Philadelphia Cheese 250g blocks costing nearly $4. Considering we need 3 of those, not to mention a tub of cream amongst other ingredients, this cake is nearing the $20 mark which is excessive for a baked cake at home. So we substituted Philly for home-brand cream cheese, about $1.70 for 250g. The major difference is the fat content, 45% Philly vs. 35% Homebrand. Normally I would have a cry about this and refuse to sub down to a lower fat version, but in this case it hopefully won't make much of a difference, baked in with eggs and and cream.


INGREDIENTS
1.5 packet (about 400g) of Arnott's Nice Biscuits.
100g butter melted.

1 punnet strawberries
2 tblsp casto sugar
2 tblsp port (non-essential)

3 x 250g blocks of cream cheese @ room temperature
1.5 cups thickened cream
1 cup castor sugar
1.5 tblsp corn flour
4 eggs , 1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Grated rind of 1 lemon
pinch of salt

First thing you should do is macerate the strawberries. Dice the strawberries up into quarters. Combine the port, sugar and strawberries, mixing well. Leave out at room temperature until needed in recipe. The strawberries will have softened and reduced a fraction, leaving behind much of their juice which sweetened with port and sugar make for a lovely sauce to drizzle on the cake later.
Preheat the oven to 180
To make the biscuit base, crush up them all up using a food processor. If you don't have one put them in a plastic bag (a couple of layers is a good idea) and give that a good bash with a rolling pin until you get a fine crumb texture. Melt the butter down and mix this through in a large bowl with the biscuits, then spread out into a generous caketin or baking tray making sure to really pat the biscuit mixture down firmly with the palm of your hand or the bottom of a heavy glass tumbler. Pop in the oven for 12mins to brown a little then take out to cool.
In a cake mixer combine the cream cheese and sugar gradually, at a low speed until well mixed. (The trick to a good cheesecake is not to overbeat the mixture at any stage - saying this though we used a handheld blender that in no way blends ingredients gently. One day we'll get a cake mixer, one glorious day.) Then add in the cornflour and 1 egg at a time then the egg yolk and mix until just combined - the mixture should be uniform throughout. Add in the vanilla, salt and lemon rind. Drain the strawberries (conserve liquid for later - return to fridge) and combine with the thicken cream into the mixture. At this stage fold it in well with a wooden spoon or spatula. Pour cake mixture into the biscuit layered tin and drop it against the table a few times to get rid of any airbubbles on top.

Pop into the oven for 40mins @ 180C then
15mins @ 150C then
15mins @ 120C then
15mins @ 100C.
During this time never open the oven door. After the time is up leave cheesecake in the oven with the door closed for another hour. This will ensure a slow lowering of the temperatuer to avoid a sunken middle, as well as making sure the cheesecake sets properly. After the hour is up transfer the cheesecake to the fridge and ideally set overnight. But if you're like us and that's asking too much, leave it in the fridge until it's thorougly cooled - this will take several hours.

On serving ladle some of the strawberry liquid on top and dig in. If this is for guests beautify the cake with fresh strawberries and artsy swirls of strawberry liquid into a small puddles of cream, then make patterns with a toothpick. that might be another post another day.