Recipe: Gratte-Paille Cheesecake by Adam Byatt
A heavenly recipe from Michelin-starred Trinity Clapham’s Chef Owner
Extracted from Trinity, Adam Byatt (Quadrille, £55.00)
Photography © John Carey.
My favourite melt-in-the-mouth cheesecake, this is crammed full of flavour and is a real celebration of cheese. It calls for not only crème fraîche but also equal amounts of white chocolate, cream cheese and the bloomy-rinded Gratte-Paille. Hailing from Tournan-en-Brie, east of Paris, Gratte-Paille is a triple-cream cheese, which means that it is made with extra cream added to the milk. Soft, buttery and, of course, creamy, it can be replaced by Brillat-Savarin, another member of the triple-cream-cheese family, or Vacherin Mont d’Or. This cheesecake is not a challenge but do make it a day in advance as it requires an overnight chill in the fridge. We serve this cheesecake with fruits of the season: apricots, peaches, blackcurrants, gooseberries, cherries (see Note, below) and also wet walnuts, freshly cracked from their shells. As the seasons progress, they join this cheesecake on the dessert plate.
Serves: 12
Read our interview with Adam on 20 years of Trinity.
Ingredients
- 375 g Gratte-Paille cheese (including the rind)
- 375 g full-fat cream cheese
- 2 vanilla pods, split open and seeds scraped out
- 160 g caster sugar
- 6 medium eggs
- 450 g crème fraîche
- 375 g good-quality white chocolate, roughly chopped
- Double cream, to serve (optional)
For the Base
- 125 g unsalted butter, melted
- 250 g digestive biscuits
Method
To make the base, put the melted butter and digestive biscuits into a food processor and pulse until combined. Press the mixture evenly over the bottom of a 25 cm round springform cake tin or 20 × 20 cm square tin. Chill in the fridge for at least 45 minutes to set.
When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 120°C fan.
Put the Gratte-Paille, cream cheese, vanilla seeds, sugar, eggs and crème fraîche into a clean food processor and blend until smooth.
Put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water and melt, making sure it does not get too hot. Add the warm melted chocolate to the smooth cheese mixture and blend until well incorporated.
Pour the cheesecake mixture on top of the chilled biscuit base and bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes until just set (it will brown slightly on top and be slightly wobbly in the centre).
Remove from the oven and leave it to cool in the tin, then transfer to the fridge to chill overnight.
The next day, remove the cheesecake from the tin. Serve just as it is, with double cream, or please see my note about cherries, below.
Note
This cheesecake goes well with cherries in kirsch. You can buy these, but it’s so easy to make your own.
Boil 100 ml kirsch with 100 ml water and 20 g caster sugar, then add 200 g pitted cherries and simmer for 10 minutes. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.
