Time for something both yummy and so very easy to make: cheesecake. The original recipe was obtained from here, but i’ve modiffied it a bit to correspond to the locally available stuff, as well as to my own tastes.

yummmmmm

Total preparation time is about 30 minutes (even less once you stop bumbling around), cooking time is 35-40 minutes. Now…you might think that in one hour-ish, you have a delicious cheesecake…ah, if only it were so..but nope…then you have to let it cool in the oven for one hour..then let it cool outside for another6, 7 hours, then stick it in a cold fridge for another 7, 8 hours. So in order to enjoy the cheesecake, you need serious planning. In addition to all the ingredients, you also need a mixer, and a big bowl, as towards the end the stuff gets liquid and tarts flying around like you wouldn’t believe it, baking paper, and some sort of container to put it in the oven.

The ingredients (that I use..feel free to improvise):

for the cheesecake:

• 5 200 g Mega Image cream cheese boxes
  

  The ingredients

• 100 grams of sugar
• 4 spoons of flour
• 4 eggs (if you get the small, regular kind..otherwise, if you manage to get jumbo eggs, use 3 and one yolk)
• one little bag bourbon vanilla sugar
• the grated zest of one lemon
• 250-300 ml 25% fat sour cream (I use the napolact one)
• 2, 3 teaspoons lemon juice
• you can use any other sort of flavouring, since the cheese is more or less neutral. I was thinking about going for rum, or coffee, or whatever you fancy
• Raisins. Yumm..Or chocolate sprinkles…or whatever…use your imagination

for the topping:

• 250-300 ml 25% fat sour cream
• 3 spoons sugar (I use brown sugar for some reason..not sure why)
• one teaspoon of lemon juice. Don’t use too much, as it might make it too liquid, and that ain’t fun

The Preparation

First the topping. For this, mix well with a fork the sour cream with the sugar and the lemon juice in a small bowl/whatever, cover it with some tin foil and place it in the fridge. The sugar won’t melt right away, but by the time you actually put it on the cheesecake, it will be gone.

Then the cheesecake”

1. Put all the cream cheese in the bowl
   

   The cheese in the bowl

2. Whip it with the mixer on low speed for about 3 minutes
3. Pour in the sugar, while mixing continuously. Make sure you scrape the cheese that gets stuck on the edges. The mixture should be getting more liquidy now
4. Add the flour, and mix well for about 1 minute
5. Add the lemon zest, the vanilla sugar, the lemon juice, or whatever other flavouring you have, and mix so that it goes in evenly
6. Add the eggs…one by one..meaning you add one egg, then mix a bit, then another and so on. be careful..this is the part where it starts getting really liquid
7. Add the sour cream, and keep mixing on low speed. It should be fairly liquid by now, with some air bubbles.
8. Add the raisins. Now, to make sure they don’t all go to the bottom when you pour the mixture in the oven recipient, you can coat them in flour. I’ve also added them as I was pouring the mixture in the oven recipient (pour a bit..add the raising..pour a bit more, add more raisins, and so on)
9. Coat the inside of the oven recipient with some butter, then wrap the baking paper on the inside
   

   Container wrapped with baking paper

10. Pour the mixture inside…all of it..scrape the inside of the mixing bowl
11. Preheat the oven. This is where it gets a bit funny. The BBC site mentions 200C/conventional 240C/gas 9. If you have an electric oven or an oven thermometer, I guess it’s all good. However I have neither, so what I do is just turn up the gas to the maximum. Mine goes to 11
12. After the oven is hot enough, place the cheesecake inside
13. Wait 10 minutes
14. Reduce the temperature of the oven. BBC says 90C/conventional 110C/gas 1⁄4. I turn it to rather low.
15. Wait 26, 27 minutes
16. These times depend on a lot of factors..what kind of container you use for the bowl..the oven kind, and so on…If you follow the guidelines of 10 minutes as hot as possible, followed by 25 minutes of fairly low, you should be fine.
17. Turn off the oven. Leave the cheesecake inside for one hour
    

    After I stopped the oven

18. After one hour, take the container out of the oven. be careful, it is still hot. Place it outside (covered) for another 7, 8 hours, so it cools down. Overnight is usually a good guideline
19. Cover it with the topping
20. Place it in the fridge for another 6, 7 hours. The colder the better
21. Enjoy

after munching on it a bit...

After adding the flavours