No Bake Strawberry Cheesecake Recipe
This is a deliciously simple no bake strawberry cheesecake recipe that it is die for! Jamie Oliver - eat your heart out! This is also the first proper cheesecake I have ever made in my life. I love cheesecake, but always ate shop bought ready-prepared ones, or chose it if on the menu at restaurants.
Strawberries are back in season and this is a great way to serve them, especially if some of them are overripe and need to be eaten as soon as.
And it is so easy to make, you'll wonder, like me, why you haven't been making them for years! Honestly this strawberry cheesecake recipe is deceptively easy to make and wonderfully delicious.
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Ingredients
- strawberries 1lb/450g
- digestive biscuits 1lb/500g
- cream cheese 1.25lbs/600g
- icing sugar 3oz/100g
- butter 3oz
- double or whipping cream 275ml/1.25 cups
- vanilla essence half teaspoon
- extra icing sugar 1oz/25g
Method
- Break the biscuits into crumbs. You can do this in a food processor, or by hand by placing biscuits in a food bag and crushing with a rolling pin.
- Melt the butter and add to the crumbs, stirring well to ensure every grain gets a covering.
- Place the biscuit crumbs into the base of a 9"/23cm loose bottom cake tin which you have previously either greased with melted butter, or lined with baking paper.
- Use a spoon to press down well.
- Set aside for 20 minutes to cool and set.
- Whip the cream cheese with the vanilla essence to a smooth paste in a mixer or food processor.
- Add the cream and sugar, and mix further.
- Carefully dollop the mixture onto the base, smoothing out with the back of a spoon or a spatula.
- Place in fridge overnight to set.
- Next day, release the cheesecake from its base by running a heated knife round the rim so that it is released from the sides. Carefully push it up from the movable bottom and place on a serving plate.
- Using the most overripe strawberries first, purée about half of your strawberries in a food processor or mixer, along with the other 1oz of icing sugar.
- Slice up the rest and place over the top of the cheesecake. If you are posh you can make fancy designs. I'm not posh, I just piled them on.
- Drizzle the purée over the top. There is enough purée to make a whole complete layer. If you want less, make less in the first place.
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My version of the above no bake strawberry cheesecake recipe
Now this is more or less the recipe above, but I am useless at weighing things out first. You have to keep washing and drying the scales between measurements, and I am basically lazy so half the time I guessed.
Cream cheese - I had 1 x 200g tub of Philadelphia and another of Consum (the local supermarket) own brand. So, 400g and the recipe called for 600g. However when I opened one of the cartons, it was almost empty!
Cream. All the local shops sell is tiny little cartons of long life cream, which while it has a photo of whipped cream on the carton, I've never been able to whip it enough to set. Also pretty sure they contain a lot less than 275mls. And I only had 1 carton.
Icing sugar. They sell icing sugar here, but in drums that don't open. There is a little shaker thing at the top which when you try to measure out a quantity, goes all over the place. And sugar is sticky. I just guessed a quantity then.
Digestive biscuits. I actually had a whole packet in, for a change.
Butter. No butter, but I had some margarine. Not 3oz either, by the look of it, and I had to keep some for the next day.
Strawberries. Check.
Vanilla essence. Had a little bottle in. Do they go out of date? It's been there a while.
So I made my version of the above recipe with my ingredients. The base didn't quite bind, because I didn't use enough butter/margarine. I also don't have a loose bottom tin so used a fluted low sided dish instead. Just as well I didn't have enough of all the ingredients, because it wouldn't have fitted in. And when I served it up, it all fell together in a sticky heap because it hadn't quite set. Apparently you can add a little gelatine to help it set, and probably using more icing sugar would have helped it set too. It has half set, all the same.
It was, however, delicious!! Look at the photo to see what happened after I had sampled some, then gone upstairs to fetch my camera!