Cheese Cake - a cake with cheese????

I love baking. Any opportunity to bake and I'll get my apron on. Laila will quickly grab a chair and join me, ready for the tasting! Max has learned the importance of this too, so brings his own chair too!

When you have children, you have a great excuse to always be making cakes, just for their consumption, or if you have a friend round for a cuppa, or the kids friends to play etc. School also presents lots of opportunities, as there are cake sales, fetes etc.

This weekend was the welcome meal at our school, to welcome the new families and give everyone an opportunity outside of the rushed drop off and pick up time to chat and get to know each other better. Each family had to bring an entree and a dessert, the main course was BBQ sausages.

I deliberated a long time over what dessert to make, I wanted something delicious, but different. I was pretty sure most people would either make some form of chocolate cake or some kind of dessert with apple (and I was spot on!). These are 2 French staple desserts, both very nice of course, but I like variety!

So I decided to make a cheesecake, a no-bake cheesecake. Really easy, not cheap, but easy, tasty and looks impressive too! The French don't tend to decorate their cakes, unless it's for a birthday, and even then some don't bother.

Well, there were several reactions to my cheesecake:

"well this one looks like it was bought"
"wow, that must have taken hours"
"what did you use?"
"how did you make it?"

At one point I was hunted down:

"is it you who made the cheesecake?"

and the best comment I got was "on s'est régalé" , this means "we thoroughly enjoyed it"!

So to say I was happy with my choice was an understatement! I'm nowhere near even attempting to qualify for the next Great British Bake Off, but I do feel proud to have represented my country (with an American dessert LOL) and introduced a proper cheesecake to the French! Apparently I'm already known as the cupcake maker!

You can get cheesecake in most restaurants as a dessert here in France, they do know what it is, but you can't buy one in a shop. There is something called a Gateau au fromage, but that's baked and it's not quite the same, not even the same as a baked cheesecake.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of my cheesecake this weekend, but it was the same as this one above, except I did a better pattern with the strawberries! I used expensive imported ingredients, McVities Digestives and Philadelpia cream cheese. But I've used the French cream cheese before, St Moret, with the same result. Something I haven't tried is making it using different biscuits. The French have tons of delicious buttery biscuits, so I aim to find the best French ingredient cheesecake!

And in case anyone did want the recipe (be warned you have to make it the day before you want to eat it):

Vanilla and Strawberry Cheesecake

250g Digestive Biscuits, crushed
100g butter
600g soft cheese
240ml double cream
100g icing sugar

I added 1/2tsp vanilla essence

Grease and line a loose bottomed cake tin
Melt the butter and mix with the crushed biscuits. Make sure they are completely coated.
Press biscuits firmly into bottom of the cake tin, then chill in the fridge for an hour.
Go off and do something else for an hour.
beat together cream cheese, cream and icing sugar and flavouring. Spread smoothly onto the chilled biscuit base.
Put back into the fridge overnight.
The next day you can decorate it however you want. I find strawberries very attractive and tasty!