buttery biscuit base

Vanilla Cheesecake

Fancy a spot of baking this bank holiday weekend? Well look no further! I got this recipe from the ever-trusty BBC GoodFood, and boy is it a good'un... simple, cheesecakey goodness in just a few easy steps. 

You will need:

250g digestive biscuits

100g butter, melted

600g cream cheese

100g icing sugar

284ml pot double cream

First off, line your tin. You will need a 23cm (approx) loose-bottomed tin and some baking parchment. I found this really easy way of lining a baking tin from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook and have used it ever since...

Lay out a piece of baking parchment on the table. Put your baking tin (or removable base) in the centre and draw around the outside. Then, cut out the circle. Spread some butter or oil on the tin and stick this on. Then, using the rest of the baking parchment, cut a long strip about 2 inches wide. Using scissors, snip little slits into it at centimetre intervals. The snips only need to be about a centimetre deep. Then, butter/oil the sides of your baking tin, and line your strips around the side (snipped side down). The snips mean your parchment is able to go with the curve of the baking tin - clever, hey!

Next step - make your base. Put your digestive biscuits into a bowl or plastic sandwich bag and smash up using a rolling pin. Careful not to split the bag or you'll have a crushed biscuit disaster! Once they're all crushed into crumbs, mix in your melted butter. When they crumbs are all coated in butter, push the mixture into your tin. Push down firmly to make a solid base. This now needs to go in the fridge for an hour. 

In this time I recommend you have a nice glass of wine and watch some telly. Chill!

Now for the good stuff! Mix together your cream cheese and icing sugar until soft and smooth. You can either do this by hand or with an electric mixer. The recipe said to add the seeds of one vanilla pod - don't know about you but I resent paying £3+ for these when you can use vanilla essence instead. Yeh I know the pods have a better flavour blah blah blah, but I'm poor and lazy. So, mix in a teaspoon of vanilla essence and then your cream. 

When all the cheese, icing sugar, vanilla essence and cream and mixed together, spoon on to the buttery biscuit base (couldn't resist). Smooth the top down with a knife or some sort of utensil so it looks pretty. 

Now for the hard bit - leave to set overnight. I know right, I'm all about immediate gratification, but sometimes you just gotta hold fire!

To dissemble: take out of fridge and bring to room temperature for about 30 mins before serving. Take out of tin (this is why a removable bottomed tin is so handy!) and remove the lining paper and base. Add some raspberries (or strawberries/blueberries) and dust with icing sugar. 

Voila! Enjoy!