Lemon Cheesecake with Berries

These cheesecakes are really yummy and easy! Plus you can have fun deciding how to layer and decorate them!

Recipe:

For the base:

- 8 digestive biscuits

- 90g caster sugar

For the cheesecake:

- 400g cream cheese

- 90g icing sugar

- Zest of 1/2 a lemon

- Juice of 1/2 a lemon

- 600ml double cream

For the topping:

- Mixed berries (frozen or fresh)

- Caster sugar

- Creme de cassis (blackberry liqueur)

- Lemon juice

1. Break up the digestive biscuits. I put them in a sandwich bag and bash them with a rolling pin.

2. Heat the sugar in a pan over a medium heat. Do not stir it with a spoon or any other utensil, just swirl it around in the pan. 

3. When it has all caramelised, like in the picture above, add the broken up biscuits and stir, like the picture below.

4. Leave this mixture to cool and harden on a plate in the fridge. When you take them out of the fridge to serve them, you might need to break them up again with a rolling pin!

5. Whip the cream, until it is thick and can hold a soft peak when you lift the whisk out.

6. In a separate bowl, mix the cream cheese, icing sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice together. 

7. Mix a large spoonful of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture, then carefully mix the rest of the rest of the cream. You want to do it carefully so that you don't knock lots of air out of your whipped cream.

The first way that I decorated them was with fresh berries (or frozen berries) and a berry sauce. Heat some lemon juice, creme de cassis and caster sugar in a saucepan, bring it to the boil, then turn the heat down and thicken the sauce up for a few minutes, then leave it to cool. Remember that the sauce will thicken up even more when it has cooled. The berries that I used were frozen, so I defrosted them in the microwave and left them to cool.

To layer it up, spoon caramelised biscuits into the bottom of whatever you are serving it in, I chose margarita glasses, then put the cream cheese mixture on top, followed by the berries, drizzle with some of the sauce and top with more of the caramelised biscuit crumbs.

Or the second way that I decorated them was with a berry compote. Put some frozen mixed berries into a saucepan with some sugar, lemon juice and creme de cassis, heat them up until the berries go from this....

...to this! The berries should have broken down and the sauce should have thickened up.

I spooned the caramelised biscuit crumbs into the bottom of the glass, then the cream cheese mixture, then the berry compote. I topped it with a few slices of fresh strawberries.

Zoe x

Swirly Cupcakes

 
 
I have got SO many compliments about these cakes, because they are very pretty and they taste really good!

 
I've started to whisk the batter and the icing with an electric whisk, which makes them both really light and airy.

For these cakes, I used the recipe from my Vanilla Cupcakes post and the icing from my How to make the perfect butter icing.

The icing is the same recipe/proportions, but there is more!

Recipe:

For the cake:

- 125g butter

- 125 g caster sugar

- 2 eggs

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 150g plain flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- Food colouring of your choice

For the icing:

- 150g butter

- 250g icing sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- Food colouring of your choice

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

2. Cream the butter until it is pale and fluffy. I have started doing this with an electric whisk, because it goes very pale and very fluffy very quickly! You can do this manually, and see how I do it here. Add the sugar and whisk it again.

3. Add the vanilla extract and one egg, mix well, then add the other egg and mix again.

4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl, then gently mix them into the batter. DO NOT turn the whisk on!! The flour will fly everywhere! Either mix it with a spoon then whisk it, or keep the whisk turned off and mix it. *

5. Spoon the mixture into 12 cupcake cases, and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

6. When the cakes, have finished baking, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool.

7. For the icing, whisk the butter until it is light and fluffy.

8. Gradually mix the icing sugar into the butter (don't turn the electric whisk on!!), then add the vanilla extract.

9. When the cakes are completely cooled, either spread the icing on or pipe it on to the cupcakes.

* For the blue and the pink cupcakes, at stage 4 add a little bit of food colouring (if its a paste, then 1/8-1/4 tsp, if its liquid, 1-2 drops), and half mix it in, so that it creates a swirled and marbled effect.

For the two-toned pink cupcakes:

- When you have made the icing, add half of the icing to a different bowl. 

- Add food colouring to one half (or do different colours on each half).

- Spoon the icing into a piping bag, but put the plain icing on one side, and the coloured icing on the other side. Then pipe the icing as usual.

For the blue cupcakes:

- Make the icing as usual, you can choose if you want to colour the icing or not. I coloured mine slightly, to make the icing pale blue.

- This is the tricky part! You need a paste food colouring here, not a liquid one. You will need to dip a toothpick into the colouring, and draw a straight line up each side of the piping bag. Its hard to get your hand far enough into the bag and not get it covered in colouring! I failed miserable at this and I have very blue hands!

- Then put the icing into the piping bag as usual and ice away! You probably want to pipe a bit of the icing back into the bowl, until the darker lines show up.

This is a good video on how to ice cupcakes with a perfect swirl!

How cute is this box? My friend Vicky got it for me from Poundland :)

Thank you Vicky!

Zoe x