I have a bit of an irregular history with cheesecake. As a child, I'm sure I was aware of them. For me, and probably for a lot of children, they were the first exposure to an ingredient (cheese in this instance) appearing in a context that we wouldn't conventionally expect to find it. It softened the blow for when we discovered that people actually pair sweet syrups with salty meat, and that jam tastes delicious inside of a mature cheddar-cheese sandwich (if you haven't discovered this yet, then please do go and try it). The list could go on for eons.
For me, I was not at all resistant to the cheesecake. Bizarre as the concept may have seemed, the concept didn't really throw or disgust me. As a somewhat fruit averse child, I may have rejected the ones that came with a strawberry or orange coulis in favour of the ubiquitous toffee variety, but on the whole I welcomed this "new" variety of confection.
While this may have seemed somehow revelatory to me, the veritable cheesecake has laid deep tracks on the pathways through time. An Ancient Greek physician named Aegimus, alive around the 5th-century BC. was said to have written a treatise on the art of making cheesecake. At this point, I think I need to send a thank you to both professional classicists, and also those who contribute to the intellectual commons by translating ancient sources.
Cato the Elder, who was a Roman senator and soldier, included recipes for what would now be known as cheesecake in his manual on how to run a farm under the name of a placenta (placenta is the Latin work for "cake" so please do not be concerned by this). As you can expect, this diverges somewhat from what we know now as a cheesecake. The base is made from a wheat flour pastry, presumably because digestive biscuits were not easy to find in Ancient Rome, and this is wrapped around the whole of the cake. Then sheep cheese is soaked, dried, kneaded and sieved and mixed with a liberal amount of honey. Thin strips of pastry (which, I'm imagining resemble filo) are arranged in layers with the honey-cheese mixture, before the whole thing is wrapped, baked and garnished pleasantly with oiled laurel leaves.
If you wish to attempt a recreation of the Roman Cheesecake, the full translation of the recipe can be found here. The good folk at Tavola Mediterranea (the self-described online "home of culinary archaeology") have provided a deciphered recipe to follow to make the process considerably easier (click here!) Though a lot of Cato's career was predicated on preventing any spread of Hellenic culture, the combination of sour cheese, honey and pastry seems to have shades of traditional Greek cooking (I feel that this will be incredibly unsurprising to any classicist, but I got a C in my AS Level Classics, so...)
Down the line, forms of cheesecake have also appeared in a 14th century recipe book collated by the chefs of King Richard II (click here!), with the name cheesecake becoming used roughly 100-years later. Around the 18th century, the yeast was replaced as a leavening agent by eggs, and it evolved to bear a closer resemblance to its contemporary form. We think of New York, when we think of cheesecake; it was actually created unintentionally in an experiment designed to replicate French mould-ripened cheeses (such as Camembert!) This is a process that I'm sure many "accidental cooks" can relate to!
Anyway, back to me. I am neither Roman Senator, nor a chef in the late Medieval royal court. But I DO have a somewhat chequered history with cheesecake (remember when I mentioned that in the opening paragraph and proceeded to talk about something entirely different? so random). Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but in recent times I have had two incidents with the dessert that have brought a reluctance to approach it again.
I'm going to implicate good-friend-of-the-author Bee in this first story, and I'm sure she won't mind because she has video footage of part of this. With a full keg of, probably unwarranted, confidence (we had successfully baked cookies before and believed we were invincible) we decided to make a cheesecake out of quark, by which I mean the acid-set cheese not the fundamental constituent of matter. Let's just say that we ran into difficulties that were not completely unrelated to curdling. The explosive video footage, expertly documented by Bee, was of me opening the spring-form tin we had baked the "cake" in and emitting a despairing whine as the structural integrity of our creation was compromised. Truly scarring. In an astonishing twist, Bee did not take any of the "________ (insert name here)" home with her.
The second story, upon reflection, seems ridiculous. I had made a mango-topped cheesecake for my brothers birthday last year (I don't talk to my brother much, so I guess my entire motivation was because I saw this as a potential redemption arc) and this time it was a no-bake one. I just had to leave it in the fridge while my family went out for dinner, right? Surely it will be fine? The infamous spring-form tin features again as a gatekeeper of tragedy here. We had just come home from the train station where we had been threatened by and had to flee from an intoxicated man, so the cheesecake was the last chance to salvage the night. I don't like to use the word "seepage" lightly, however this was the primary theme of it's revelation, as the cream cheese mixture flowed freely from its confines. Unpleasant for sure.
So, why am I trying this again? I don't have a very satisfying answer. I had just been thinking about cheesecake for about a week before then (why? who knows?) and I don't particularly like the affordable cheesecakes that can be commonly bought that much. So, with insufferable arrogance, I took this back into my own unproved hands (and spring-form tin - YES, I used it again!).
Chocolate, Blackberry and Liquorice Cheesecake
Okay, so the immediate and probably warranted question that lingers here is "why make a complex cheesecake? why not a normal one?" and, yes, I hear you. However, my thought is that the difficult thing about making a cheesecake is implicit regardless of the flavours and features (I hope this quells any potential #NotAllCheesecake related uproar). I could just as easily fail on a plain cheesecake, and what would be the point of writing a recipe for that?
This cheesecake is a riff on Nigella Lawson's Liquorice and Blackcurrant Chocolate Cake (which is not available online, but is included in her Simply Nigella book, which I can promise contains at least 100 other great reasons to buy it). I find chocolate cake pretty boring, to be honest, so it takes a fair deal of persuasion for me to make one. I have great trust both in the power of liquorice and the wisdom of Nigella, and therefore a couple of years ago I DID make this, and it was sensational. The liquorice and the blackcurrant both cut across the chocolate before it crossed the boundary into the "overly-sweet" territory.
Why didn't I just make this cake again? Well, as mentioned previously, my mind was firmly lodged in the cheesecake mire and had been rotating through potential flavours like a roulette wheel that refused to stop spinning. However, the triumvirate of liquorice/chocolate/blackberry grabbed the wheel, stopped its perpetual revolutions and forced me to see sense. Of course, this was the adaptation to try!
Obviously, liquorice is controversial. I do want to say that eating this cheesecake is worlds apart from biting into a stick of liquorice (though, I find that pretty enjoyable too). The flavour it brings is very slight, and I like to think of it as building a bridge between the blackberry and the chocolate flavours - which, admittedly, is hard to imagine until you've tasted it. If you didn't know the ingredient list, you may not know it was there, but the role it plays is important.
That being said, I think if you were to trade the liquorice for some kind of spice then it would result in a creation that is different but probably just as good! We all have flavours that we just aren't a fan of, and that is fine. As per usual, I'll note some adjustments after the recipe - or if you can think of any I haven't specified, then by all means go ahead with them! That's what cooking is all about, and it is how we evolve (in more of a culinary than a Darwinian sense though). Just so you know, I buy my liquorice powder at Grape Tree which is a store fairly commonly found across the UK.
Lastly, I'm trying very hard not to apologise for this, but I do want to acknowledge that I made this over two days, and therefore isn't a quick bake. However, the time that it is setting in the fridge requires no conscious effort from you, and you are free to spend it at your leisure!
Ingredients & Method
Time taken: 12-24 hours.
Biscuit Base
Two 154 g packets of Oreos
2 tbsp of caster sugar
85 ml of melted butter
Cheesecake
250 ml of whipping cream
400 g of cream cheese
230 g of caster sugar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp of cocoa powder
300 g of dark chocolate
5 tbsp of liquorice powder
1/2 tsp of salt
Blackcurrant Topping
300 g of blackcurrants (either fresh or frozen are fine)
3 tsp of cornstarch
2 tbsp of brown sugar
50 g of granulated sugar
2 tsp of lemon juice
1 tbsp of liquorice powder
1 tbsp of aniseed liqueur such as Sambuca or Ouzo (optional)
Pinch of salt
To begin with, make the biscuit base. This is so it has time to refrigerate before the cream cheese mixture is set atop of it. Begin by melting your butter in the microwave. While this is happening, remove the cream from your Oreos and set them aside.
Once the cream has all been removed, firmly but moderately crush your biscuits into a coarse grind. I used the flat end of a rolling pin to do this, but any heavy implement will be fine. After the Oreos are all crushed, add the debris to a bowl and mix with the sugar and melted butter.
When the mixture is combined, add to a 9-inch cake tin and press down so it lays relatively flat (you can use your hands for this part). Put the cake tin in the refrigerator and let cool while you make the cake mixture.
Pour your cream into a mixing bowl and whip until it increases in volume and forms stiff peaks. This will take about 5-10 minutes if you don't have a stand mixer (which I don't), but you could also use a handheld whisk or electric mixer. Set aside.
Melt your chocolate using the bain marie method (I always think of the Vietnamese banh mi sandwich when I hear this). Break your chocolate into squares and then bring a small saucepan of water to the boil. Lay a heatproof dish over the top. This should touch the water, but not cause it to overflow.
Add your squares of chocolate to the dish, and mix around slowly as they melt. This may take a bit of time, but melting chocolate straight in a saucepan or a microwave can cause it to burn. This should be left to cool for about 15 minutes while you mix the remaining ingredients.
In a separate bowl, mix together the cream cheese, caster sugar and salt. Set this aside and return to your chocolate. When this has cooled sufficiently, mix completely into the whipped cream and add the cocoa powder, stirring until completely combined.
Fold the cream cheese mixture into the chocolate cream until completely combined. Add the liquorice powder, making sure it is evenly distributed.
When everything is mixed together, spoon your mixture on top of your refrigerated biscuit base. After it has all been added to the tin, use a flat spatula to level the top. As a topping is going to be added, don't worry if it isn't perfectly smooth; it doesn't need to be! As long as it is relatively even then it will be fine.
Put your cheesecake in the freezer and leave for at least 12-hours. This may well be an overly cautious suggestion (many people attest that only 4 hours is needed) and you can try shorter setting times out, but I give my official recommendation to the 12-hour suggestion (or overnight). Now, you have space to do whatever you like! Have fun. Learn new skills. Sleep. Who cares? This is your time.
Now, after the refrigeration time (I hope you got a chance to relax and have fun), it is time to prepare the blackberry topping that will adorn the cheesecake.
Begin by stirring together 3 tsp of cornstarch with 2 tbsp of water and set aside. This will be used to give the topping a more viscous consistency and prevent it from running down the sides.
Meanwhile, in a medium sized saucepan, add the blackberries, both varieties of sugar, aniseed liqueur (if not using, replace with the same quantity of water), lemon juice, liquorice powder and salt. Heat over a medium high and bring to a boil, before simmering for 4 minutes. At this point, the berries should be releasing their juices and breaking apart somewhat.
Add the cornstarch mixture to the berries, and stir over a low heat until it thickens. Remove from the heat, decant into a bowl and leave to cool in the fridge for 30 minutes. Once this has cooled, pour over the cheesecake and leave in the fridge for another 2 hours for the topping to set.
Once the cheesecake has had a chance to sit, cut into slices and serve!
Adjustments
As mentioned previously, the aniseed liqueur is optional. Really, only use this if you have it to hand! If not using, replace with water, or perhaps even lime juice. If you have it to hand, then some ground star anise would replicate the aniseed flavour.
This could potentially be made with other berries; chief in my mind is that cherries would be a suitable replacement (which would veer towards black forest territory).
The liquorice powder could be replaced with any number of spices. Allspice would give it more of a wintry shade, whereas cloves would bring out the fruitiness of the blackberries.
Oreos aren't vital. I was initially reluctant to use them, but after I confronted some illogical prejudices around biscuits that are named after a brand (rather than what they are, e.g. digestives) I realised they were probably the correct way to go. However, the field is wide open for experimentation.
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