A new poll reveals that Britain’s favourite teatime cake is not the classic Victoria sponge, but the cheesecake. In fact, the Victoria sponge has been pummelled into fifth place, behind chocolate cake, carrot cake and lemon drizzle.
But many of us could knock up a passable Victoria sponge at short notice. Who among us has ever produced a successful cheesecake?
I can certainly recall some memorable failures: burnt ones, runny ones, cracked and cratered ones. If it’s going to be the country’s favourite, it’s possible a little guidance is in order.
Here are 17 types of cheesecake to try, from the closest to home to the furthest off-piste.
First, some basics: cheesecake is an ancient invention – the oldest extant recipes come from Cato the Elder – but the sort we are used to owes an important debt to commercially manufactured cream cheese, the main ingredient, which dates to the late 19th century. Cheesecake recipes are commonly divided into two main types: baked and unbaked. The baked sort comes in English and American styles, with the second split into two sub-styles – New York and Chicago – but this is a rabbit hole down which we need not travel. Felicity Cloake has distilled the various strains to provide perfect versions of baked and unbaked.
A classic cheesecake base is usually made from biscuits bashed up with a rolling pin (or whizzed in a food processor), mixed with butter and pressed into the bottom of the tin. Digestive biscuits are a common choice in Britain, while Americans generally opt for graham crackers. There is, however, plenty of room for exploration and the exercise of personal taste; Biscoff, rich tea and shortbread all work well. The bases of Ravneet Gill’s passion fruit and white chocolate mini-cheesecakes are made with a 50-50 mixture of ginger nuts and Hobnobs. Cloake’s no-bake recipe above uses cornflakes.
Some purists claim that a no-bake cheesecake isn’t really a cheesecake at all – it doesn’t contain eggs and is set by chilling in the fridge. You may as well point out that a cheesecake isn’t really a cake, but more a flan or a torte. But if there is a guaranteed way to avoid ruining a cheesecake, it’s to make sure it never goes near an oven. If you have ever burned one – or if, like me, you have never not burned one – the no-bake variety might encourage you to try again.
Benjamina Ebuehi offers a lemon and elderflower no-bake take, while Nigel Slater presents a straightforward banana cheesecake with white chocolate. Yotam Ottolenghi’s version adds yoghurt (as well as honey and thyme) to the mix. This truly simple reader-submitted no-bake lemon cheesecake, from Good Food, uses mascarpone instead of cream cheese.
Another surefire way to avoid burning your cheesecake by accident is to burn it on purpose. The Basque cheesecake, which had a moment a couple of years ago, is a bit of a departure: scorched on top, barely set in the middle, slightly collapsing in on itself, with no base or crust. All it requires from you is the confidence to keep saying: “Yeah, it’s meant to look like that.”
The Basque cheesecake was supposedly invented in 1990 at La Viña restaurant in San Sebastián. This incarnation – from Nieves Barragán Mohacho, by way of Nigella Lawson – is served with a liquorice sauce.
Other regional variations on the cheesecake include the Italian crostata di ricotta (more of a cheese tart in shortcrust pastry), the Japanese, or cotton, cheesecake (a sort of cheesecake-souffle hybrid) and the Polish sernik, a dense cheesecake made with twaróg, a soft cheese available at several UK supermarkets.
Sometimes, the base of a cheesecake ends up, in one form or another, on the top. This is the case with Tamal Ray’s honey and ginger cheesecake, which, like the Basque cheesecake, has no base to speak of, but makes up for it with a crumbly streusel topping.
While a variety of cream cheese is usually the basis for a cheesecake, you can make one with goat’s cheese; take this honey and thyme variation. There is also such a thing as a sweet potato cheesecake, which is an appealing deep-orange colour. You can produce a vegan cheesecake, too: Meera Sodha recommends using a brand of vegan cream cheese called Sheese, along with 300g of silken tofu.
For a truly over-the-top pudding, try an Eton mess cheesecake, an unholy combination that includes not only cream cheese, but also mascarpone, double cream, meringues and strawberries.
Finally, if your dinner guests are the sort that prefer another drink to dessert, have it both ways with a gin and tonic cheesecake. This alcoholic no-bake is described as a “perfect sweet treat for a grownup dinner party”; to be honest, it sounds a little immature: it contains the zest and juice of a lime, crushed meringues, a can of gin and tonic and an additional 50ml of gin. I’m not saying no.
