I had a lot of strawberries at home, and I wanted to use them up before they go bad. A good friend of ours has recently just been discharged from hospital, and I thought a wonderful cheesecake would add a little ‘sweetness’ in his life and help him with his recovery. This particular cheesecake is a no-bake cheesecake, and it is very easy to make, unlike the usual traditional cheesecake.

You can replace the homemade strawberry compote with one you can buy from the store – as long as it says it’s a ‘conserve’ it should work fine. Alternatively, you can also use other fruits that suit your fancy – cherries or apricots go really well with this cheesecake!

Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 125g of digestive biscuits
• 75g of butter, soft
• 300g of cream cheese
• 75g of icing sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp of lemon juice
• 250ml of cream (preferably one that says ‘patisserie cream’. Double cream works fine, too.)
• A few fresh strawberries, washed, cleaned and sliced into 2 (optional)

Preparation:

1. In a food processor, blitz the digestive biscuits until it turns into crumbs. Add the butter, and blitz again until it’s all mixed (the mixture will clump)
2. Press this mixture into the bottom of a 20cm springform tin (or, one of those foil cases like I do, if you don’t have one on hand). You can also layer a few sliced strawberries on top of the crumbs (optional!).
3. In a big bowl, beat the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice until smooth.
4. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the cream for a few minutes.
5. Fold the cream into the cream cheese mixture.
6. Spoon the cheesecake mixture onto the biscuit base, and smooth with a spatula.
7. Cover with clingfilm, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
8. Just before serving, spoon and spread the strawberry conserve/compote on top of the cheesecake.
9. Slice, and serve!

Compote/Conserve

Ingredients:

• 250g of fresh strawberries, cleaned and cut into small pieces
• 75g of caster sugar
• 3-4 tablespoons of water

Preparation:

1. Place all the ingredients in a pot, and boil gently until thick and gooey.
2. Leave to cool. The syrup will thicken when cool.