Lemon Cheesecake

Notes

• Using margarine instead of butter will give a softer base, but it still holds well.
• The thickness of your cream cheese and cream as individual ingredients makes an important difference to a cheesecake that won’t fall apart. Violife cream cheese is slightly thicker than dairy cream cheese; Oatly whipping cream is thinner than dairy cream but thickens up more than standard dairy cream when chilled. So I was able to increase the cream-to-cheese ratio closer to 1:3. The original dairy recipe was closer to 1:4.

Ingredients

Base

• 180g gingernuts
• 60g margarine or butter, melted

Filling

• 400g cream cheese (I used Violife’s vegan)
• 80g icing sugar, sifted
• 2 lemons
• 125ml double cream (I used Oatly’s whipping)
• 50g lemon curd

Method

Base

1. Grease and line a small springform or loose-bottom tin. For this quantity I used a 7.5-inch round for a shallow cake.
2. Melt the margarine or butter in a metal or glass bowl au bain-marie.
3. Blitz the gingernuts in a food processor to crumbs.
4. Add the biscuit crumbs to the melted margarine or butter.
5. Tip the crumb mix into the lined tin and press it into an even layer with the bottom of a cup.
6. Chill in the fridge for 40 minutes to an hour.

Filling

1. Zest and juice the lemons: zest into a large mixing bowl, juice into a small bowl for later.
2. Add the cream cheese to the mixing bowl with the zest and sift in the icing sugar. Beat to loosen the cream cheese.
3. Add 3 tablespoons of the lemon juice and beat again until smooth. Pour in the cream and keep beating until it thickens — pulling the beaters out should leave very stiff peaks.
4. Spoon the filling into the tin and spread it evenly over the base. Smooth the top.
5. Chill for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
6. To serve, remove the cheesecake from the tin, peel off the lining, and decorate as you like — mint, candied lemon, a drizzle of lemon curd, gingernut crumbs.