Baked Cheesecake (V) from COOK: Serve Up Joy

A fantastically simple, new York-style cheesecake – rich, dense and creamy. Its delicious just as it is but, if you want to add fruit, blueberries are the best to bake into it, as they don’t tend to bleed their colour. otherwise, wait until the cheesecake has cooled and add whatever fruit or decoration you like on top – sliced strawberries in a concentric pattern look very pretty.

For the base

125g (4½ oz) butter, plus extra

for greasing

60g (2½ oz) caster sugar

140g (5oz) plain flour

30g (1oz) semolina

For the filling

420g (14oz) full-fat cream cheese

150g (5½ oz) caster sugar

Grated zest of 2 lemons

300ml (10½ fl oz) soured cream

2 eggs

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla bean paste

125g (4.oz) blueberries (optional)

Icing sugar, to decorate

Preheat the oven to 160°C fan/180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Lightly grease and line a 20cm (8 inch) loose-bottomed or springform cake tin.

To make the base, put all the ingredients into a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Alternatively, you can cream the butter and sugar together by hand, then add the flour and semolina to make a grainy crumb texture. Press the biscuit mix into the prepared tin, spreading it out evenly and pressing it down with the back of the spoon to form a fi rm base. Don’t worry if it starts to push up the sides a little. Cook the base in the oven for 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Reduce the oven temperature to 140°C fan/160°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3.

To make the filling, place the cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth. Fold in the soured cream until just combined. Whisk the eggs with the vanilla bean paste, then fold into the cream cheese mixture – make sure there are no lumps. Spoon the mixture onto the base and level out with a spatula.

Place the cheesecake in the oven and bake for 50–55 minutes until set.

Allow to cool before serving, sprinkled with blueberries (if using) and dusted with icing sugar.