Nigella's Choc Lime Cheesecake

Well, I promised Pig Head that if she passed all her final exam papers, I would present her a cheesecake. That said, she checked her result during office hours and confirmed that she's finally graduated from SIM! I think that's her greatest wish and accomplishment in 2008!

Gosh! I looked through many cheesecake recipes before I decided on Nigella's.

That evening after knowing of the good news, I hurried to the supermart and Phoon Huat and got all the cheesecake ingredients. Except that I couldn't find any choc biscuits.

The aluminium foil wrapped springform cake tin, inside-out.

The recipe called for blended biscuit crumbs, but you can simply chuck the digestive biscuits in a plastic bag and smashed them with a rolling pin. The biscuits were rather soft so I simply let my fingers do the job.

I mixed the biscuit crumbs with butter first before putting them into the cake tin, and making them level flat with the back of a spoon. Then followed by refrigerating it.

These weighed 750g of cream cheese, which I bought from Phoon Huat for slightly less than $10. 1 X 250g of Phildelphia cream cheese would cost me $5+ already!

They looked like raw bananaz from afar, didn't they?

Beating the cream cheese until smooth before adding the sugar and subsequently the eggs.

Then the lime juice. You can start heating a kettle of water now.

The cheese mixture was then ready to be baked after pouring into the cake tin with biscuit base. I used a 20 cm springform cake tin, which I could only find at Phoon Huat, and it was filled up almost to the brim.

Let the cheesecake bake in a preheated oven of 180 Deg C for about 1 hour.

I also bought a large square cake tin as a bain marie since I don't have one at home. Unfortunaltely, water started to seep out and nearly drown my oven.

Water dripping from the cake tin.

Watching the cheesecake intently as the time was coming up.

The top looked set after 1 hour of baking. I touched it with my finger and it felt kinda springy.

There were afew small bubbles on the top. I let it cool for awhile before putting into the fridge.

I tried to be very careful but not enough to prevent this unsightly mishap!

The finished product, except that there was this vapour on the top layer of the cake.

I would definitely try my hands on another cheesecake again, but not that soon, and one that doesn't require 750g of cream cheese!

Choc Lime Cheesecake (http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=20008)

INGREDIENTS
200g Double Choc Maryland cookies (in the purple packet) ( I couldn't find any, so just took a pack of digestive biscuits instead)
75g unsalted butter
750g Phildelphia cream cheese
200g caster sugar
4 whole eggs
2 yolks
juice of 4 limes
20-21cm springform cake tin
kitchen foil

Serving Size : Serves 8

1. Place a large overlapping piece of foil over the bottom of the springform tin, and then insert the pan ring over it. Fold the foil up and around the sides of the tin and place the whole thing on a second piece of foil, also folding it and pressing it securely up around the tin so that you have a water-tight covering. Actually, I sometimes find some water dribbles out from this supposedly secure casing on unwrapping, but it doesn't seem – as long as you unwrap the outer layer straightaway – to cause any sogginess.

2. Process the biscuits until they are like crumbs, then add the butter and pulse again. Line the bottom of the springform tin, pressing the biscuits in with your hands or the back of the spoon. Put the tin in the fridge to set, and preheat the oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4.

3. Beat the cream cheese gently until it's smooth, and then add the sugar. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks, then finally the lime juice. Put a full kettle on.

4. Pour the cream cheese filling onto the chilled biscuit base, place the tin in a roasting tray and pour hot water from the recently boiled kettle around the foil-wrapped cheesecake to come about halfway up the sides of the springform; don't overfill as you'll only spill it on the way to the oven. Transfer it as steadily as you can to the oven and cook for 1 hour or so, checking after 50 minutes. It should feel set, but not rigidly so. You want to be able to detect, below the skin, the slightest, sexiest hint of a quiver within.

5. Take the roasting tin out of the oven, then gingerly remove the springform from its water-filled tin, stand it on a rack, peel off the outer layer of foil, tear away the side bits of the first layer of foil and leave it to cool. When the cheesecake's cooled down completely, place it in the fridge and leave it there till 20 minutes or so before you want to eat it.

6. Transfer to the plate you're going to serve it on (it will need to be one without a lip, or a cakestand) and unclip. The underneath bit of the first layer of foil, along with the base of the tin, are going to have to stay in place, unless you like living really dangerously. I don't mind a bit of risk in the kitchen, but fiddling about with something as desirably lacking in solidity as this dreamlike cheesecake is beyond even my clumsily impatient foolhardiness.

7. It makes life easier if, when you cut it, you heat the knife and cake slicer (and I find I need to use both, the one to cut, the other to lift up and ferry slice to waiting plate) under a very hot tap first.