Cheesecake

Before you start

• an oven, and a 20cm springform tin
• it needs six hours in the fridge, so it really wants making the day before
• a roasting tin big enough to stand the cake in

Ingredients

Serves 8 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 170goat biscuits — digestives, or any plain sweet biscuit
• 110gbutter
• 350gfull-fat cream cheese — at room temperature, or it will not go smooth
• 300mlcream — double or whipping
• 90gcaster sugar
• 4eggs
• 25gplain flour
• 1lemon

Method

7 steps

1. chop · 10m

   Biscuits crushed to crumbs in a bag with a rolling pin, mixed with the melted butter until they look like wet sand, then pressed hard into the base of the tin with the back of a spoon.

2. roast · 12m walk away

   Base baked at 160°C until it smells toasted, then left to cool while everything else is mixed.

3. fold · 10m

   Cream cheese beaten with the sugar, flour and lemon zest until completely smooth, then the eggs one at a time and the cream last, on the lowest speed there is. Beaten fast it takes in air, and air is what cracks a cheesecake.

4. roast · 1 hour walk away

   Tin wrapped in foil, stood in a roasting tin, boiling water poured in to come halfway up, and baked at 150°C until the edge is set and a saucer-sized circle in the middle still wobbles.

5. rest · 1 hour walk away

   Oven off, door propped ajar, and the cake left inside for an hour. A sudden cold kitchen is the other thing that cracks it.

6. rest · 6 hours walk away

   Then into the fridge, uncovered until cold and covered after that, for at least six hours. It sets in the fridge, not in the oven.

7. finish · 5m

   A hot knife run round the edge before the tin is released, and the lemon juice sharpened with a spoon of sugar and poured over if it wants cutting.