The history of cheesecake

Cheesecake was already well-known in ancient Greece.  It was served to athletes during the first Olympic games on the Isle of Delos. The recipe fell into Roman hands with the Roman conquest of Greece.  They introduced cheesecake to Great Britain and Western Europe. Cream cheese saw the light in 1872 and that was the start of the Modern Age cheesecake.  Today, whichever cheese is used, we all love cheesecake.

I love to potter around in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes. Entertaining guests is one of my favourite hobbies, but I do not have enough time during the school term for all of this.  Luckily our local Woolworths is always there to rescue me if there is no time to prepare a meal.

During the July school holiday, I took a short break from my Kip McGrath Education Centre to do some of my favourite things.  I love my blue recipe cupboard, stacked with recipe books and could spend hours just browsing through the interesting books.

As we were expecting guests the next day, I paged through a couple of the recipe books to find something to serve with coffee.  Inside one of them, I found a loose page torn out from a magazine dated August 2013.  It was the recipe for a delicious looking lemon cheesecake.  As our two young lemon trees were bearing huge yellow lemons, this was a perfect recipe.  This cheescake is very easy to make, does not take much time and is definitely a huge success.

Ingredients

250 g Tennis Biscuits

125 g melted butter

3 eggs

100 g castor sugar

4 x 250 g cream cheese

15 ml lemon zest

60 ml lemon juice

Method

1. Grease a 22 cm spring-form baking pan.
2. Process the biscuits until finely crushed and mix with the butter.
3. Press the mixture over the base and sides of the baking pan, leaving a 2 cm gap from the top. Place in the fridge for at least ten minutes to set.
4. Beat the eggs and sugar until it thickens, add the cheese, zest and juice and mix until smooth.
5. Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 45 minutes at 160ᴼC until just set.
6. Switch off the oven, open the oven door slightly and let the cake cool in the oven.
7. Refrigerate overnight and serve the next day with a sprinkle of icing-sugar and a dollop of lemon curd. Enjoy!
   

   Lemon Cheesecake