Daring Bakers' April Challenge - Strawberry Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

I've never made a cheesecake before, so I didn't want to do do anything too drastic to the recipe - in the end I decided to make mine a strawberry cheesecake.

It's a cute little half-sized cake since I didn't have enough cheese in the fridge to make a full-sized one. I also had some leftover topping from a fruit crumble, so I used that as well.
I thought I'd try amending the recipe as I went along to keep track of what I was doing for future reference, so I'll post that here (I forgot the water bath, so I'm leaving it out of this rewrite - it seemed fine without it anyway):

INGREDIENTS:

Crust:

145g digestive biscuits, crushed

60g butter, melted

Cheesecake:

330g cream cheese, room temperature

100g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

100ml double cream

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. vanilla extract

puréed strawberries

40g ground almonds

crumble topping, ground almonds and fresh strawberries, to decorate

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat fan oven to 160°C. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into a 17cm tin. Add a thin layer of sliced strawberries. Set aside.

2. Combine cream cheese and sugar in a bowl until smooth. Add eggs, a little at a time. Add double cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and blend until smooth and creamy. Separate batter into halves: pour one half into the tin.

post-Step 1.

3. Stir puréed strawberries into the remaining batter and strain through a sieve. Add 40g ground almonds, then pour into the tin on top of the other layer and tap the tin on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface.

4. Bake for 35 minutes, until almost firm, sprinkling with crumble topping and ground almonds 15 minutes before it is ready. Turn off heat and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour, then remove it and leave to finish cooling. Decorate with strawberries, cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Finished Cheesecake

Mmm.

I had fun making this and will be making cheesecake again, no doubt. To be honest this one could have tasted more strongly of strawberries, and perhaps I should have added a touch more sugar as well... but I was very pleased with it in any case. :D