Orange & Honey Torte with Mangoes & Passion fruit

I will only have butter on my toast. No jam, no marmalade, no Marmite or Nutella, no honey. I don’t know why, because I like most of these things in every other way (apart from Marmite), but I can’t stand them on toast. Really this just means that I have to get my honey fix in other, far more delicious, ways such as this summery torte… I don’t usually think of honey as a core flavour for a dessert. I’m sure I’ve added it to biscuits, cakes and flapjacks to add a bit of extra sweet and stickiness, but rarely used it as a main attraction. In this dessert blossom honey is combined with orange to make a really light version of a cheesecake – using just yoghurt and cream instead of any cream cheese. In my mind cheesecakes set with gelatine have a bad image of being overly firm and bouncy, but this is a really light set so it stays super creamy. Blanched almonds are added to the biscuit base (I used Nice biscuits because I thought the coconut would complement the other tropical flavours) which is such a simple idea but one I haven’t done before and was delicious – you know I’ll get almonds into anything somehow! My favourite part, however, was the accompanying fruit salad. Passion fruit instantly make me feel transported to a desert island and are without a doubt my favourite fruit. Combined with fresh mango and a sticky, ever so slightly spicy, ginger and lime syrup and I almost didn’t even need the torte. Almost. You can find the recipes here – enjoy!

Mini Lemon Cheesecakes

There are only four of us in my immediate family. My sister is away and my Mum doesn’t eat that many sweet things – so this leaves just me and my Dad to bake for. Whilst we wouldn’t exactly say no to eating layer cakes and batches of muffins and trays of scones, it’s hardly good for us and more often than not the food is no longer its freshest and best before we’ve had a chance to eat it and this waste is super annoying. It also limits my recipe choices: when I had some leftover cream cheese I knew immediately I wanted to make cheesecake but all the recipes I read were way out of my feasibility – calling for 700g of cream cheese, 400g of biscuits, finished bakes serving 12 etc. It was time to go it on my own!I don’t create my own recipes from scratch very often so I used this as a starting point but halved it to make it even smaller. I prefer chilled cheesecakes to baked – they seem to be creamier yet lighter and so much easier. I’ve also written before about how citrus desserts for me need to be rammed with flavour so I wanted this to be really punchy with lemon. These also gave me the chance to finally use my food rings which I got for birthday nearly a year ago now and had never used, and I was really pleased with how they turned out looking very neat! I wasn’t exactly sure how to use these so I just set the cheesecakes straight onto the little plates and then removed the ring at the end which actually worked well as I didn’t have  to risk moving them! Overall I loved the finished cheesecakes – they were the perfect size for a satisfying, slightly decadent individual treat and tasted divine. Mini Lemon Cheesecakes
Makes 3-4 mini cheesecakes

Ingredients: 50g butter

120g digestives

200g cream cheese

1tbsp creme fraiche

50g icing sugar

1 lemon, zest and juice

Method: 1. Heat the butter in the microwave until fully melted. Place the digestives in small plastic bag or bowl and use the end of a rolling pin to bash the biscuits to crumbs. Tip the biscuits into the melted butter and stir until fully combined then press a few teaspoons of crumbs into the base of each food ring.

2. Combine the cream cheese, crème fraiche, icing sugar and lemon zest and juice all together in a bowl until smooth. Taste and tweak if you like – the exact quantities do not matter too much in this recipe, so feel free to add more sugar for more sweetness or some more lemon for a sharper cheesecake etc.

3. Spoon the cheesecake mixture between the food rings, pressing the mixture down and levelling the top to prevent air bubbles forming. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 3-4 hours until firm.

4. To remove the cheesecake from the ring, I just warmed them slightly with my hands and ran a knife round the edge and then gently pulled the ring up and off. Zest a little more lemon over the top of the cheesecakes if you wish and enjoy! 

Passion-fruit and Lemon Cheesecake

This cheesecake shouts pure summer to me. Currently, the rain and low temperatures outside my window shout pure winter. Strange contrast really, a slight “in your face” to the weather. But the main point is, this is a mighty fine cheesecake.
Why such a mighty fine cheesecake? Lets go through. Crumbly, buttery biscuit base: classic good cheesecake. Thick, rich, creamy middle with very strong lemon “tang”. All topped off with big tropical flavour from juicy fresh passion-fruit. Plus the best bit: So Very Simple To Make!
  The recipe was sent to me from my Mum, and she found it on the Carnation Nestle website. Celebrity chef Phil Vickery has created loads and loads of recipes using all the Nestle products (condensed milk and soft caramel) and not only put all the recipes on the website, but also turned loads of them into “Pudcasts“ (videos of him making the creations): my new favourite thing. Its amazing the variety of dishes he’s thought up using these ingredients: from cookies and truffles to sundaes and mini treats to pies and tarts. And this lovely cheesecake!

The clever thing Phil Vickery discovered is that when condensed milk reacts with lemon juice, the mixture thickens dramatically. That's how this cheesecake is so simple: you don’t need to bake it or add gelatine to thicken it, the reaction has already occurred when you mix the lemon juice into the mascarpone and condensed milk mix. After a few hours in the fridge: voila! Creamy gorgeousness at your service. Then its just a simple matter of spooning over the passion-fruit. However, in the original recipe, Phil fills the cheesecake with a blueberry compote, something I chose to leave out. I thought it might overpower the passion-fruit, so I added the juice and zest of a couple of extra lemons so that there were complimenting bright flavours rather than overpowering ones. Also, the original recipe states to use 4 passion-fruit, but to get a decent covering like I had below I used 6. If anyone tries it with the blueberry, then do tell me how it went! You can find the recipe (and have a happy time browsing all the others) here. I personally have my eye on the Millionaire’s Shortbread….Enjoy!