Poppys Seed: Not So Cheesy After All

So, you want to make a cheesecake.

You are enticed by the luscious sweet tang of cream cheese and biscuit-y bite, but the thought of hauling yourself to the kitchen and following a recipe with the words ‘Bain-Marie’ in it make you immediately stop salivating, then fear not.

Frankly, I do not have time (or want to have time – for that matter) in my life for any kind of recipe, which involves running a bath for my food to sit in whilst in the oven. So, Thank You to the French for inventing the delicate heating process of ‘Mary’s Bath’, but no Thank You, all the same.

It is mid-summer in sunny SA and we are already baking, so there is absolutely, positively no room for any other source of heat and therefore this cheesecake shall be a well and truly oven-free recipe. So for those of you who are in Cape Town today at 32 Degrees – Hoorah!

To re-create this divine dessert you will need:

2 x Packs Cream Cheese
1 x Tin Condensed Milk
2 x Fresh Lemons
Splash of Vanilla Extract

1 x Pack Buttery Biscuits (Shortbread or even Digestive Biscuits will do!)
1 x Ginger Biscuits
Enough Melted Butter to mix with Biscuit crumbs – roughly 125g
Strawberries, sliced – to decorate

First, you want to bash your biscuits in question to smithereens and add your melted butter until your mixture resembles wet sand.
Line your spring-form cake tin with cling film so as to avoid impending panic attack when said cheesecake doesn’t oblige and neatly slip out of your tin, when ready.
Press your ‘wet sand’ into lined tin, spreading over the bottom and all up the sides, covering the entire inside of your tin, you can move your tin to the freezer now so it hardens up, after all - time waiting for cheesecake to freeze inevitably means time spent not eating cheesecake and this is not what we want, not one bit.

Meanwhile, blend your cream cheese in a big bowl until smooth and pour in condensed milk, lemon juice and vanilla, mixing all the time achieving a silky, smooth concoction.
Pour this pale emulsion into your biscuit lined tin and return to refrigerator.
Slice your strawberries as thinly as you can and arrange around the top of your cheesecake once it has fully set.