Baked raspberry cheesecake

This cheesecake was divine! I had never baked a cheesecake before this; only ever whacked together some cream cheese and mascarpone and put it on top of a biscuit base - and the conclusion is that it really doesn't taste that good this way, you might as well be eating cream cheese out the tub! And we all know that feels far naughtier than one slice of this crunchy, creamy, soft, juicy, sweet cheesecake. Or maybe not...

I got this recipe from the Comfort Food recipe book I have (which I linked and put a picture of in my baked carbonara post). The recipe was for a Manhattan Cheesecake with a blueberry topping - basically just a syrupy coulis drizzled on top. I had seen so many pictures online, however, of marbled cheesecakes, and so I really wanted to try this. The majority of the recipes were from American writers, however, where cups are flying at you in all directions - I don't think anyone has the time or effort to convert those! So I followed the recipe from my cookbook for the vanilla cheesecake, but I didn't do a soured cream topping which is typical of a Manhattan style cheesecake. I then made a raspberry coulis and marbled it in and the outcome was fab. It didn't really sink that much in the middle which was brilliant as well. So this cheesecake is perfect if you're trying to impress (as the marbling technique looks great and is fairly simple to do) and if you want a naughty, comfort food.

Ingredients:

- 85g butter

- 200g digestive biscuits, crushed

- 400g cream cheese

- 2 large eggs

- 140g caster sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- raspberries (can't remember how many I used, but probably a punnet)

- icing sugar (couple of spoonfulls)

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees/gas mark 5 and brush an 8-inch springform tin with oil.

2. Melt the butter in a pan and add the crushed biscuits, stirring until coated in all the butter. Spread in the bottom of the tin, pressing down with your knuckles to check it is firmly covering the surface.

3. Place the cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla essence in a food processor and process until smooth (I did this by hand, may take longer though). Pour over the biscuit base and smooth the top.

4. Crush the raspberries through a sieve (doesn't have to be particularly fine), and stir with some icing sugar. Spoon the raspberry liquid on top of the cheesecake in patches - basically blob it on in various places. Next, using cocktail sticks or a small pallette knife - depending on the effect you want - gently swirl through the raspberry patches. The picture below is what mine looked like at this stage, before I baked it.

5. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until set. It should be a bit wobbly in the middle, but not liquid. Leave to stand for 20 minutes, then chill in the fridge for 8 hours, or overnight. (I think mine was only chilled for about 6 hours and it was absolutely fine so don't worry too much, as long as it is set enough to cut slices!)

6. Serve on its own or with extra raspberries, or cream, or a chocolate truffle.

Enjoy :)