Baked lemon cheesecake with tamarrilo topping

To finish off the dinner party shenanigans we had this sumptuous baked lemon cheesecake with a zesty sour cream and tamarillo topping. 

Ingredients

150g malt biscuits

150g gingernut biscuits

150g melted butter

250g mascarpone

600g cream cheese

2 eggs & 2 egg yolks

Lemon zest x3 and the juice of 1

4 Tbsp flour

3/4 C sugar

Heat oven to 180 degrees celsius, line the bottom of a cake tin, preferably one with removable sides, with baking paper. Blend the biscuits and butter in a food processor till smooth and line the bottom of the tin then chill.

Whisk the remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour into tin. bake for 40 minutes or until the cheesecake has formed yet still wobbly. Another way to test is to have a slightly doughy knife when pricking the middle. Turn oven off and leave in to cool.

Topping

150ml sour cream

1/2 lemon juice

6 tamarillos 

Mix sour cream with lemon juice and spread on top of cheesecake. Remove centres of tamarillos into a bowl and top the cheesecake with it. Either place in the fridge to chill or eat straight away!

Dinner party shenanigans - Gnocchi & Cheesecake

Some might say I'm foolhardy, but I thought it might be fun to make gnocchi, from scratch, for a party of eight. I prefer ballsy, whilst not everyone got their meal at the same time it was delicious if I do say so myself! 

After only one previous attempt, there was some shrieks of 'Yussss! We've got a floater!!!!" when my plump bundles of gnocchi arose to the surface having run out of flour three times! Needless to say it was an entertaining and triumphant night!

Thankfully the cheesecake wasn't such high maintenance!

Ingredients 

(serves 8)

Gnocchi

6 potatoes (I used 14 probably why I ran into flour shortages)

2 eggs

4-6 cups of flour

Peel and boil potatoes until soft. Drain and cool, blend with an egg beater until completely smooth.

Combine potato with eggs and flour (start with the 4 cups and see how you go). Kneed in a bowl or on a floured surface until dough is no longer sticky and is ball like.

Flatten and cut into 4 strips (or inch thick), roll each strip into a 2cm width snake and then cut up into 1cm long bits. Bring a pot of salted water the boil and place gnocchi in (3-5mins), once risen to the surface remove with a sieve and plate up.

Sauce/topping

4 italian sausages

4 chorizo sticks

200g butter

40 small sage leaves

1/2 a bottle of red wine

12 button mushrooms

1 punnet of cherry tomatoes

1 pack of italian parsley

8 basil leaves

1 lemon juiced

Pepper & salt

Heat the butter in a deep frying pan until bubbling add the sage leaves and cook till crisp then pour into saucepan. Use the residue of the burnt butter sage sauce to stir fry the sausages in (whole to start). Once browned remove and cut into medium slices and return to pan. Add the finely chopped chorizo and mushrooms and cook till golden.

Start adding the red wine and simmer. Keep topping up and cooking through till the bottles finished.

On the side, combine in a bowl the cherry tomatoes, cut into 1/4s, the roughly torn italian parsley and finely chopped basil. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over top and season with pepper and salt.

To combine, plate the gnocchi, heat the burnt butter sage up in the sauce pan and drizzle over the gnocchi, make sure they all get sage leaves, spoon over the italian sausage combination and top with the fresh zesty tomato mix.

If you want everyone to eat at the same time - may I suggest getting another pair of hands!

Here comes pudding!

Click here to here about my baked lemon cheesecake with tamarillo topping