Recipe: Salted Caramel Basque Cheesecake
A delicious new recipe for a salted caramel Basque cheesecake with raspberries and pistachios from TV baker and author Ruby Bhogal
Image credit: Matt Russell
Check out our interview with Ruby here
Extract from Ruby’s new book, ‘One Bake Two Ways: Fifty bakes with an all-plant option every time’ (Pavilion Books):
“I hate sheep mentality, but it’s that very thing that led me to developing this recipe. For yonks, all I saw on social media was a slice of cheesecake and people taking a slow, dramatic scoop out of it. I resisted the urge to fall foul of the trend for months. Then one day I tasted a Basque cheesecake in a restaurant and realised I had played myself all this time by denying myself the joy of making one of these.
This dessert is painfully easy to make. Yet it looks worthy of being the centrepiece dessert for any dinner party. My take on the normal Basque cheesecake has bundles of salted caramel – in and on top. It is finished with a mountain of tart raspberries to cut through the sweetness and some much-needed texture from the pistachios. This versatile dessert will be one you’ll run back to more times than you did your ex.”
Image credit: Matt Russell
Serves 9
Ingredients
For the cheesecake:
- 700 g full-fat cream cheese, room temp
- 285 g golden caster sugar
- 5 medium eggs
- tsp vanilla bean paste
- 115 g soured cream, room temp
- 250 g double cream, room temp
- 50 g salted caramel sauce
- plus extra for drizzling
- 40 g cornflour, sifted
To finish:
- handful of fresh raspberries
- handful of pistachios, roughly chopped
- 23-cm/9-in. springform cake tin, greased and lined with 2 layers of greaseproof paper, pressed into the tin and coming up around the sides (it will look rustic!)
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Do not use the fan setting here; we want a slow, steady bake.
Put the cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer and use the paddle attachment to beat until smooth. Once smooth, add the sugar and mix again until fully incorporated. Add the eggs, one by one, mixing well between each addition, then add the vanilla bean paste, soured cream, double cream and salted caramel. Mix well.
Sift in one-third of the cornflour, mix until combined, the repeat with the remaining two thirds. Going slow and steady just helps to ensure the cornflour doesn’t become lumpy.
Pour the cream mix into the prepared tin, scraping down the sides and making sure there are no clumps of cornflour or cream cheese. If there are, pass the mixture through a fine sieve to remove.
Place the tin onto a baking tray (this will just help you remove it from the oven when the tin is hot) and pop onto the middle shelf of the oven. Bake for 45 minutes and then turn down the temperature to 180°C/gas mark 4 for another 5 minutes until the top is darkened. It may look burnt, slightly cracked around the sides, and still wobbly in the middle, but fear not, this is exactly what we are after.
Leave to cool completely at room temperature before popping into the fridge overnight to set perfectly.
Before serving, add a few spoons of salted caramel sauce to the top, and use the back of a spoon to coat and swirl it around. Pile on fresh raspberries and a generous scattering of chopped pistachios to finish.
Use a hot knife (run under hot water or hold over a steaming kettle and wipe) for that *perfect* velvety, caramel-drowning slice.
