Strawberry Cheesecake

Ingredients

Base

• 225 g digestive biscuits
• 100 g butter

Raspberry jelly (optional)

• 350 g frozen raspberries
• 80 g granulated white sugar
• 1.50 tsp powdered gelatin (unflavoured)
• 60 ml cold water

cheesecake topping

• 1 packet strawberry jelly
• 150 ml boiling water
• 450 g cream cheese (full fat)
• 150 g caster sugar
• 100 ml milk
• 100 ml whipping cream

Method

1. To start off, put the biscuits into a sealable bag and crush them up into tiny crumbs, make sure there are no big chunks. Then cut up the strawberry jelly and dissolve it in 150 ml of boiling water, leave this to cool. Now, for the Base, melt the butter in a pan and pour in the crushed biscuits. Mix all of this together so that all of the biscuits get covered in melted butter. Put all of this into the cake tin and flatten it down evenly. You want to compact the biscuit layer as much as possible so maybe use a small pot to flatten the mix. Leave this to one side until later.
2. Next, we'll start on the Cheesecake filling. Put the cream cheese into a mixing bowl and beat it until its nice and smooth. Then, beat in the caster sugar. Add the milk and the dissolved and cooled jelly. Mix the liquids in but you want to try and avoid any lumps so maybe use a hand blender/mixer on a low speed. That said, you don't want too many bubbles either, so do keep it on a low speed. Finally, fold in the cream. Pour this into the cake tin, on top of the prepared crumb base. Pour slowly to avoid air bubbles! Chill in the fridge for a few hours, until completely set.
3. That's the cheesecake sorted, if you want to stop there. If not, wait a few hours for the cheesecake to set and then start with the Raspberry Jelly!
4. Put the frozen raspberries and sugar into a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Cover the bowl with tinfoil and heat the berries for about 40 minutes, when the berries are soft and have released their juices. Remove the bowl from the heat and pour it's contents (the berries and juice) through a fine-meshed strainer suspended over a measuring cup. This part is a bit of a pain but you need to press the berries through the strainer so that all you have left there are the seeds. You'll need 300ml of seedless raspberry juice so add a bit of water, if necessary.
5. In another small bowl, soften the gelatin in 60ml of cold water, let this mixture sit for about ten minutes. Heat the raspberry juice until hot, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and stir in the gelatin until it has completely dissolved, return the mixture to the heat if necessary. Let the raspberry jelly cool down and then ensure that the cheesecake is totally set. Pour the Jelly onto the cheesecake gently, moving the cake around so that the liquid doesn't burrow a little hole in the cheesecake
6. Put the cake back into the fridge and leave it in there for as long as possible, I left it overnight and the jelly still wasn't totally set, It still tasted great though! Serve it up with a dollop of whipped cream or a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream and enjoy!