Takes the Cake

I love to cook and being English I love dessert. I've been asked for the recipe of a cheesecake that I made recently and thought it might make a good post. However, many of the best English desserts are very high in calories and so are not for the faint-hearted (literally). So if you are on a low calorie diet please look away now.


Raspberry and Ginger Cheesecake

This is a British recipe so I cannot give equivalents in cups since I haven’t tried to fit these amounts into American cup measurements.

225g/8oz Ginger Biscuits, crushed

100g/4oz unsalted butter, melted then cooled

150ml/1/4 pint double cream*

225g/8oz mascarpone cheese

2 tbsp. clear honey

Juice of 1 lime

350g/12oz raspberries (or strawberries or bananas)

Make the base by combining the melted butter and the crushed biscuits and pressing them into a greased 8-inch dish (ideally with a removable bottom). Chill for 30 minutes.

For the filling, whip the cream in a bowl until firm but not stiff. Then add the mascarpone, beating it into the cream to a smooth texture.

Fold in the honey and lime juice and most of the fruit, reserving a few for decoration.

Spoon the mixture onto the base and spread with a knife.

Chill for at least three hours. Decorate with remaining fruit before serving.

Recipe from a BBC Cooking magazine in the 1990’s

*A word about double cream. This is a thick cream that is not the same as heavy whipping cream found in American supermarket. In the past I have tried to substitute whipping cream for double cream in other cheesecake recipes and it has not worked for me. It may be that whipping cream does not have the fat content to hold itself in this kind of situation. But you are welcome to try and hopefully you will have better luck than I did.

I buy my double cream from a British shop in southern California. When I lived in Arizona I found it at a gourmet supermarket called AJ Fine Foods. It costs around $6. Although it needs to be kept refrigerated, unopened it does have around a six month sell by date. The glass jar I buy is 170g/60z and is enough for this recipe.