Wednesday 19 September 2007

Tayside Blueberries

  • Although blueberries are native to North America, they grow extremely well in the cool and wet conditions here in Scotland. At the Scottish Crop Research Institute just down the road in Invergowrie they grow lots of soft fruit crop plants for various studies, a happy consequence of which is that there is a bountiful harvest of unwanted fruit! The raspberries are great of course, being what Tayside is famous for, but so are the blueberries - and a bargain at £5 for an entire kilo. According to wikipedia blueberries are one of only a few human foods that are naturally colored blue. I can’t think of any others (unless you count blue cheese). Any suggestions??
    And of course they’re super healthy – full of antioxidants, vitamin C etc etc, so even in cheesecake form you can convince yourself it’s all good :)

I realise this is the second cheesecake recipe in a row, I need to improve on getting recipes into blog form, but it’s a good one so bear with me. Takes a while, but the advantage is that it’s made the day before so all you need to do is whip it out of the fridge when people arrive and leave it somewhere conspicuous to be admired!



Lemon and Blueberry Cheesecake



300g shortbread biscuits



675g cream cheese, softened
400g caster sugar
2tsp finely grated lemon zest
35g plain flour
2tbsp cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt
6 large eggs
125ml lemon juice
lots of blueberries

Crush the shortbread biscuits and mix with enough melted butter to lightly coat the crumbs (I didn’t weigh what I used, but maybe something like 50-75g). Press into the base and sides of a greased 9in tin and freeze until required.

Beat together the cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest until smooth, then add the flour, cornflour, vanilla extract and salt, beating until well combined.

Add the eggs one by one, then the lemon juice, beating well between additions.
Put the prepared tin on a baking tray and pour in the filling. Sprinkle a few handfuls of blueberries over the filling using varying amounts of force so that they sink to different depths within the mixture.

Bake on the centre shelf at 130 for 1 hour, then at 120 for another hour, then at 100 for a further 1.5h – book says until internal temperature of filling reaches 79oC although I don’t have a temperature probe.


If there’s time, allow the cheesecake to cool to room temperature then refrigerate overnight. Due to the ridiculous length of cooking time and my own lack of planning/time, I usually end up having to stay up late waiting for the cheesecake to finish cooking. Not wanting to stay up a further hour or two waiting for it to cool, I just turn the oven off without opening the door and leave it in there overnight ready to fridge in the morning.



Once cool the top of the cheesecake will look a bit ugly – higher at the edges than in the middle and probably with some cracks and splits in it. To tart it up and make it look more presentable even off the surface by trimming the edges away, then coat with a thin layer of double or sour cream followed by lots of blueberries.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the recipe, I'll try it this weekend.

jane said...

gooooood cheesecake, and the sorbet/icecream was great too.

Anonymous said...

Why not just fill the sunken centre with whipped cream and pile it with blueberries? Then sprint up and down the stairs a couple of times.

Louise said...

Good plan Jane's mum. You can rest assured that the discarded edges didn't go to waste though... there was a cry of horror as I opened the bin to throw them away, then Andy swooped into the kitchen and gobbled them up at double speed :)