Although unbaked fridge cheesecakes are popular, flavoured with anything from mocha to blackberry and granadilla, and nowadays salted caramel, Nutella and white chocolate, baked cheesecakes appear just as often. Before the 1960s they were mostly made with a baked crust, but the arrival of the biscuit crumb crust changed everything.

Here you can replace the bran biscuits with amaretti or digestive biscuits, and serve a sweet-and-sour sauce of stewed apricots and rosemary separately.

(Makes 1 x 23 cm cheesecake)

Crust

200 g bran biscuits or digestive biscuits or amaretti biscuits, crumbled

15 ml sugar

90 g butter or margarine, melted

Method

Mix the biscuit crumbs, sugar and butter or margarine and press into the base and sides of a 23 cm springform pan. (For the food processor, first process the biscuits, then add the sugar and butter or margarine and mix again.)

Filling

4 eggs, separated

200 g sugar

1 ml salt

grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

2 ml vanilla essence

250 ml cream

2 tubs (230 g each) cream cheese, beaten until smooth

30 g cake flour, sifted

Stewed apricots infused with rosemary (see recipe below), or chopped praline, nuts or fresh fruit for decorating

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 °C.

Beat the egg yolks and gradually add 100 g of the sugar.

Add the salt, lemon rind and juice, as well as the vanilla, cream, cream cheese and flour, and beat until just mixed.

Beat the egg whites until frothy and gradually add the remaining sugar. Beat just until stiff peaks begin to form.

Lightly fold the egg white mixture into the cream cheese mixture. Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 75 minutes until the filling is firm but still slightly soft in the centre. Switch off the oven and leave the cheesecake to cool in the oven.

When the cheesecake is cold, carefully loosen the edges with a knife and lift it onto a cake plate. Decorate as desired.

Bring it up t0 date

Such a fabulous cheesecake doesn’t really need anything else, but if you like sour on sour as I do, serve it with a bowl of stewed rosemary apricots; let everyone help themselves:

Add 180 g soft Turkish apricots, 180 ml honey and 3 sprigs of rosemary to 750 ml water in a medium saucepan, bring to the boil over moderate heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the apricots with a slotted spoon and boil the syrup with the rosemary until the syrup thickens, about 25 minutes. Discard the rosemary. Spoon the syrup over the apricots and set aside to cool. Transfer to a pretty dish and serve with the cheesecake. DM168/TGIFood

Vir Pens en Spens, Unika Primary School, Randburg, 1962

From Share, by Errieda du Toit, published by Struik Lifestyle. Photography by Ian du Toit.

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