Roasted Strawberry Ginger Cheesecake

For Gustav’s birthday tomorrow I’m preparing Roasted Strawberry Ginger Cheesecake,  inspired by an Australian TV program Kitchen Cabinet where political journalist Annabel Crabb visits politicians in their homes, bringing a specially prepared dish each time.  The recipe is quite simple, and there’s also a video version on YouTube for those who can’t view the Australian video. I spotted a luscious tray of Spanish strawberries at the market last week and set aside about 600g for this recipe. I had to hunt around a bit at the supermarket to find mascarpone cheese, which must be one of the few non-domestic cheeses other than Parmesan available outside specialist stores in France.

The last important ingredient is ginger nut biscuits which are an old favourite in Australia, here used to create a biscuit base for the cake. I found them on one of the British shelves at the supermarket, although of course at about five times the usual price, grumble grumble. They’re not quite the “durable little buggers” as described in the recipe which need “lamming the hell out of them with a hammer” to reduce them to crumbs. These ones fell apart as easy as the digestive biscuits they’re blended with.

I think I over-whipped the cheese mixture as it was much more liquid than what I saw being spooned onto the base in Annabel’s video – in fact I just poured the strawberry cheese mixture in. Although the recipe doesn’t call for it, I suspended my mix in a bath of water for its oven time, as I did with my pumpkin cheesecake last year.  The top surface wasn’t fully browned when I removed it from the oven, but I thought the lunar appearance quite appealing, not so much moon of green cheese, as of red cheesecake.

After cooling down, it’s off to a holding cell in the fridge overnight before execution in front of a hungry squad in the afternoon.