Lemon Cheesecake

When I first came to Australia, I had no cookbooks (obviously) and I did not have my mother's big baking book. The interwebz was not filled with gorgeous food blogs or recipe sites then as it is now - yes I am showing my age. So I bought this book called The Boiled Egg and Beyond. It was in the weird book box that we got when I was working at the Melbourne Zoo. It had daggy pictures and the recipes showed sandwiches made with gasp plastic white bread. *Face palm*

One of the many gems this book had was Lemon Cheesecake. You can tell it will be an easy recipe if the title is Boiled Egg and Beyond. So here it is - 10years on and I still make it. Look it's in the middle of the week and I present to you Cheesecake.

What you need - 20cm springform tin and patience as you need to leave this overnight in the fridge. You will want to eat this immediately but it needs to be left overnight to set.

250g biscuits - I use ginger snaps but I think these are too hard to crunch up. I have used digestives in the past.

Add a tsp of mixed spice if you have it. If you don't who cares?

Melt 125g butter and process.

Chuck half of the mixture into the tin and press into the bottom. Press the other half with a glass into the sides. Refridgerate this while you are preparing the cream cheese filling.

Cut 375g cream cheese into cubes and get that into your stand mixer or bowl if you have a hand mixer. I used to do this with a hand mixer (Huey's cooking brand!) and it was definitely fine. Start beating the cream cheese which should be at room temperature until soft.

Pour in a can of condensed milk and beat until it is stiffened up. This will take about 3-5 minutes. You can see that the mixture become pale and starts to get thick and stiffer.

Add in juice of 1/3cup lemon juice, 2tsp vanilla essence and 1tsp grated lemon rind. And the cream cheese filling is done!! Leave it in the fridge overnight and it will set. The texture is still soft and creamy. This version of cheesecake does not use gelatine which is fantastic for me. I tried one with the powder gelatine and that stuff stank!