Strawberry cheese cake(Valentine Special)

February 13, 2013 in Desserts 2 Comments

February month is a month of Love,it is most commonly remembered for Valentines day.Saint Valentines day is commonly known as Valentines day.Recently it is becoming famous in India too.Valentines day reminds me of Candle light dinner,romantic music at the background with a quiet dinner followed by a yummy dessert.And dessert reminds me of cheese cake and since strawberry is in season now, this Valentines I dared to prepare strawberry cheese cake .But last week when I had just started the preparation of this yummy cheese cake there was power failure for continuous 2 days,the power was like on and off ,led me to disappointment,yes,the texture wasn’t what I had expected,since this recipe needed continuous cooling to set,it did disturb the cake to set..nevertheless it tasted awesome..After all the taste matters,and I couldn’t resist myself in sharing this.
I studied the recipe from various sources like food groups,websites and blogs.Recently Sandhya Puranik had posted Jayashree Baleri s recipe in a food group,and most important was it was eggless and I was tempted to prepare it.Then I found the eggless version in Nigella s website too which looked good.And finally I tried Nigella’s recipe with slight variations.Would want to try Jayashree’s version too very soon which is prepared with the hung curds.
Though I love to prepare cheese cake the problem here is, the main ingredients like cream cheese,heavy cream etc is not commonly available.However I managed to get cream cheese from a hyper market and used the normal fresh cream.Ofcourse there are many substitutes for the cream cheese like hung curds,paneer,cornflour etc which I will try one by one in the coming days.Would want to master someday with the cheese cakes.Now eagerly waiting for an opportunity to prepare other cheese cakes, especially I want to prepare mango cheese cake in my new spring-form tin…Due to fluctuation of the power failure this cheese cake tasted more like a souffle.

Three basic steps to be followed while preparing any cheese cake is that,there are 3 layers to be set one at a time.A little patience and love will give perfect results provided there are no power cuts.This cheese cake is eggless and no bake.Please do not keep this cheese cake in the freezer to set.

Ingredients:

Digestive biscuits-10(Marie or Parle g is also fine)

Butter-2 tbsp

Cream cheese-200 g

Fresh cream-200 ml(I used Amul)

Agar agar- 5 gm

Sugar-1/2 cup(reserve little sugar to whip fresh cream)

Vanilla essence-2 tsp

Strawberry-6-7

Strawberry jelly packet-1

Method:

First step:

Crush the digestive biscuits in a bowl with your fingers or crush it with a rolling pin by putting in a ziploc.
Melt the butter in the microwave for few seconds and add it to the biscuits and mix it with a spoon.
Take a spring-form tin,or a wide bowl or individual glasses and spread the biscuit mixture tightly with the help of a spatula,refrigerate for 20 minutes.
The biscuit will be set,refrigerate until the second step is ready.

Second step:

Puree the strawberries along with the sugar and keep it aside.
Refrigerate the fresh cream overnight,keep the whipping blades in the freezer for 20 minutes along with the bowl in which the bowl will be used to whip the fresh cream.
Whip the fresh cream in the frozen bowl with an electric beater,adding little sugar until soft peaks forms.
Dissolve the agar agar mixture in the water as per instructions,cool it and fold in the fresh cream mixture along with the strawberry puree and vanilla essence.
Take the bowl out from the refrigerator and carefully spoon in the strawberry mixture and keep it to set again for 4-5 hours or overnight.

Third step:

Prepare the strawberry jelly as per the instructions,cool it little bit,take the set glass out and fill in the jelly mixture slowly without disturbing and keep it the fridge again to set.
It will take hardly 30 minutes to an hour to set.
Garnish with strawberry and serve it with love.