It has taken me quite a while to find and perfect my cheesecakes, when I say perfect…. to make them the way my family and I like them. A while back my mum developed a cough every time she ate shop bought cakes and biscuits.  When I stated making cheesecakes it soon became clear that I couldn’t use crushed biscuits for the base or it would result in a lot of suffering. I experimented with various bases and our favourites are a short bread (please see my shortbread recipe) or an oaty crumble base which I have used in this recipe for you. Because I cook the base do allow plenty of time for cooling and refrigerating.

You can of course use a conventional biscuit crumb base of 150g of Crushed Biscuits and 60g Melted butter, which is easier!

You will need:

For the Base:

• 60g Caster Sugar
• 60g Butter
• 60g Plain Flour
• 60g Rolled Oats

Filling:

• 2 tbsp Raspberry Jam
• 280g tub of full fat Cream Cheese (I used Philadelphia Cheese)
• 150ml Double Cream
• 60g Icing Sugar
• 375g Fresh Raspberries (or whatever size punnet is available)
• 40g melted White Chocolate for drizzling

Method:

Line a 20cm tin with grease proof paper on the base and grease with butter.

Pre-heat the oven to 140degrees.

• Mix all the base ingredients together until it resembles lumpy bread crumbs.
• Pour into the prepared tin and press down with the back of a metal spoon until firm and level, if the mixture sticks to the back of your spoon (which I have found to be an issue in the hot weather) dip the spoon in some flour and continue.
• Bake for 5mins. You just want to firm the base slightly without actually cooking it. If this is over cooked it will become a little too hard, if not cooked then the base becomes a little soggy.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool and pop in the fridge to go completely cold for about an hour.
• Once cold spoon the jam into the middle on the base and spread gently outwards leaving at least a 5cm perimeter with no jam (the jam will spread with the cream cheese too).
• Pop this back in the fridge.
• Put the cream cheese, cream and icing sugar into a bowl, either with a hand mixer or the whisk attachment on your stand mixer, whisk until really thick.
• Pour over your base and pop back into the fridge until you are ready to serve.
• Just before serving remove from the tin, arrange the raspberries on top and drizzle with the melted white chocolate and enjoy!

I hope you like this as much as we do!!