Blueberry Cheesecake

It's odd that I haven't posted a single cheesecake recipe up here since the start of this blog. The first ever cake I made was actually the New York Style 'Sunshine' Cheesecake from Food Wishes. I believe this is not the first time I'm mentioning Food Wishes on my blog. Chef John is a really talented guy with awesome humour. Really, it was his videos that got me interested in cooking and baking in the first place. I digress.

I love cheesecake. There's something about that rich, creamy, velvety texture that calls out to my taste buds. No matter how much I resist, once there's a slice of cheesecake in front of me, I'll polish it off. Doesn't matter if its a humongous slice, I'll polish it off.

You must be wondering why the candles. Well, it was my best friend's birthday yesterday and I baked this for her birthday cake. You didn't think I would bake a huge cake like that for no reason, did you? There's simply no way I'd risk having a huge cheesecake in my fridge. With 3 or 4 days the whole thing would be gone, gone into my stomach. Yes, that's how pathetic my self control is. Yes, that's how much I love cheesecakes.

I also gave her a cookie mix in a jar. Seeing how the small jar of cookies I gave her for Christmas was polished off in 5 minutes, I thought it would be a better present.

Back to the cheesecake. Maybe you haven't seen the healthier blueberry muffins? I had a giant box of blueberries and I only used about a quarter of them for the muffins, so I decided to use the rest for this cheesecake. Blueberries are awesome. Cheesecakes are awesome. So a blueberry cheesecake must be awesome, right? Right.

The batter is cheesecake, mixed with blueberry sauce. I did this after pouring in half the batter, hoping to get a marbled pattern. But when I pour in the rest, the marbling was all pushed to the sides.

So no, I'm not going to ask you to do that in the recipe. In the end, I skipped trying to marble it, and went ahead with just a pretty pattern on top of the cheesecake. The blueberry sauce is, after all, much better served spooned over the cheesecake.

You are going to love this cheesecake. It's rich, definitely, because that's how cheesecakes are supposed to be. But it's not so rich that it's hard to stomach. The blueberry sauce provides the perfect sweetness to cut through the rich cheese. Of course, rather than just spooning it over the cake, flood the whole plate with it and place the cheesecake over. That's indulgence.

Beautiful picture isn't it? Those aren't my hands by the way.

Another plus is that this cheesecake can be pretty low fat. I used 80% fat free cream cheese, low fat sour cream and skim milk for this so the fat is as low as can be. That's a good thing. But still, there is sugar, so don't go thinking you can down a whole cheesecake and stay slim haha.

Adapted from Food Wishes' New York Style 'Sunshine' Cheesecake
Ingredients:

Blueberry Sauce:
400g blueberries
70g raw sugar
4 tbsp water



Crust Ingredients:
300g graham crackers
52g tablespoons butter, melted

Filling Ingredients:
32g all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 or 2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest

4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
3/4 cups white sugar

2/3 cup milk
4 eggs

Method:
1. Cook blueberries, raw sugar and water in a pan over medium heat until the blueberries have burst and the sauce is a deep purple.

2. Place the blueberries in a sieve over and bowl and leave to drain.

3.Crumble the crackers finely. Pour melted butter and mix together till well incorporated. When you press the crumbs they should hold together.

4. Press crumbs onto the bottom of a springform pan (bottom lined with parchment paper) and up the sides as well.

5. In a bowl, whisk together flour, sour cream, vanilla extract and lemon zest.

6. In a large bowl, cream the cream cheese and sugar.

7. Whisk in milk till just incorporated. Whisk in eggs one at a time.

8. Whisk flour and sour cream mixture into the cream cheese mixture until just combined.

9. Arrange half the blueberries onto the bottom of the cracker crust. Pour the batter over it. Drizzle 1/2 cup of the syrup drained from the blueberries

10. Use a skewer or a knife to marble it randomly or nicely, your choice.

11. Tap the pan onto counter to release air bubbles. Then bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 1 hour.

12. After 1 hour, turn off the heat and leave it to cool for 3 to 4 hours, or overnight.

13. Top the cake with blueberries if you wish, slice, then serve with the sauce.