My Birthday Cheesecake!

I have read that you crave what you are intolerant to and judging by my dairy cravings of late, (read overconsumption of custard, chocolate, cheese, yoghurt) this is true for me.

Normally I am pretty good with avoiding dairy. There are many other alternatives out there; I love my almond milk and coconut yoghurt and I don’t miss cow juice at all. But when I break the seal, I find it very hard to get off! Although my skin will tell me so in a week.

Having had a birthday celebration last month, I wanted to do a cheesecake for dessert  –  and I thought as long as I was having the real deal, I might as well go the whole hog and make a very old favourite which included white chocolate too. This was one of my popular dinner party recipes in the 90’s – I had forgotten how good it is. And it was equally regarded at my dinner recently. Without a biscuit or pastry base, it is easily gluten-free too, but just check that your white chocolate is gluten-free as not all of them are.

This is dairy debauchery at it’s finest. Yippee!! Happy birthday to me!!!!

200g white chocolate

rind of 1 lemon

500g cream cheese

500g sour cream

140g yoghurt*

3 eggs

1 tab lemon juice

2 tabs light coconut sugar*

1½ tabs maize cornflour

¼ teas salt

Fresh cream or lime curd or caramel sauce and fresh fruit to serve

Mill the chocolate with the cornflour, sugar, salt and lemon rind on SP 9 for 10 seconds.

Add the cream cheese and beat on SP 5 for 10 seconds. Add the eggs, juice, yoghurt and sour cream and mix well.

Pour into a lined loaf pan and sit this in a roasting pan half filled with hot water. Bake for 40 minutes at 175°C. It will have a slight wobble and be brown on top. Switch off the oven and leave in the oven for another hour. This prevents the top from cracking.  Remove pan from dish and refrigerate overnight.

When serving, turn out onto a platter and garnish with fresh cream, lime curd or caramel sauce and fresh fruit. I made some lime curd and used some beautiful figs and raspberries from the market. I like to pull it from the fridge about an hour before serving to let it come closer to room temperature but it’s good cold too!

* There is plenty of sugar in the white chocolate which alleviates the need for a lot of sugar in this recipe. I used some Jalna vanilla yoghurt in this which is quite sweet so didn’t use any sugar at all, just adding a little stevia to taste. You could use sweetened vanilla yoghurt without the sugar or just natural yoghurt with adding sugar. It’s up to you.