I don’t know why I haven’t been making more no-bake cheesecakes in my life! I have made more cheesecakes than I can count and I know basically every trick in the book for getting cheesecakes to bake up just right. But this was just so damn easy!!! And while not like a baked cheesecake, I think it’s just as delicious – just different. The filling is much lighter and mousse-like and just lightly sweetened. Nothing wrong with that.
I decided to make this today because for the first time since we moved to Saudi, I found bricks of real cream cheese! (All that’s ever been available is the spreadable form of cream cheese in tubs.) This is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Cherry Cheesecake recipe and it is just so easy and soooo delicious. Just note that while I’ve already made a more substantial crust, this recipe doesn’t yield the tallest cheesecake. Which we’re totally happy with but if you want a tall/deep cheesecake like say New York-style, then I would suggest you double the ingredients for the filling.
Crust: 250 grams digestive biscuits or graham crackers / 150 grams (6 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted
Filling: 300 grams (10 oz) cream cheese, room temperature (the kind in brick form, not in a tub) / 60 grams (1/2 cup) icing sugar / 1 tsp vanilla extract / 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice (which I forgot – oops!) / 1 cup heavy or whipping cream
Optional topping: 3 cups of strawberries, hulled / 2 tbsp granulated sugar
Blitz the digestive crackers or graham crackers until they’re crumbs in either a blender or food processor. Add in the melted butter and pulse to combine.
Press the crust mixture into the bottom of an 8 inch springform pan.
Pop into the fridge just to chill and let it set up a bit while you move onto the filling. Beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla and lemon juice until smooth. I used the paddle attachment on my stand mixer because I’m lazy but you could always just do it by hand.
In a separate bowl, whip the cream until you get medium peaks. (Nigella’s recipe said to just “lightly whip” but I figured medium peaks was a good middle ground.) Again I used my stand mixer with the whisk attachment but you could just whisk it by hand.
Using a spatula, gently fold the whipping cream by hand into the cream cheese mixture until everything is combined and smooth.
Gently spoon the filling onto the crust and spread evenly.
Cover with clingfilm and chill and set in the fridge for minimum 3 hours or overnight. (I obviously went with the bare minimum.)
If you want you can have the cheesecake on it’s own. Or you can top it with some macerated strawberries. The shop was completely out of fresh strawberries so I used some defrosted frozen ones – not ideal but still did the trick. Simply mix the strawberries with the sugar and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. I piled up most of the strawberries on top of the cheesecake with some extra on the side but you can do whatever you’d like obviously. Slice up and enjoy!
eating in moose jaw 