Baking can be a lot of fun but not everyone wants to shop for a long list of ingredients or spend hours over a stove, but this cheesecake recipe is almost effortless to make.
Mary Berry’s fruity passionfruit and orange cheesecake takes less than 15 minutes to prepare before it sets in the fridge for a couple of hours.
This delightful dessert combines the tropical flavour of passionfruit with the sweetness of orange in a rich and creamy cheesecake, which makes it perfect to make in the summer.
This recipe also requires no oven for cooking and you only need seven simple ingredients that you likely already have in your kitchen cupboard so it is also quite cheap to make.
In her cookbook ‘Quick Cooking’, Mary said: “Quick, light and simple – with no gelatine! Use oat biscuits as a variation if you like a textured cheesecake base.”
How to make a fruity cheesecake
Ingredients
- 150g of digestive biscuits
- 75g of butter (plus extra for greasing)
- Four passion fruits (halved)
- 250g of full-fat mascarpone cheese
- 325g (one jar) of orange curd
- 200ml of double cream
- Zest from one orange (grated)
Make sure to use full-fat mascarpone cheese for the cheesecake as lower-fat versions are too soft and the cheesecake will not be able to set properly.
Kitchen equipment needed:
- Round cake tin
- Baking paper
Method
To prepare this cheesecake, grease the cake tin with butter and line the tin with baking paper.
To make the cheesecake biscuit base:
First place the digestive biscuits in a sandwich bag and bash them with a rolling pin until they resemble fine crumbs. Alternatively, you can also blitz the biscuits in a blender to get crumbs.
Melt the butter in a pan on a medium heat, and once the butter is fully melted, stir in the crushed biscuit crumbs until you have a biscuit base.
Press the biscuit mixture into the bottom of the cake tin but make sure not to press it up the sides.
To make the cheesecake topping:
Collect passion fruit juice by scooping out the flesh of two of the passion fruits and then sieving the fruit over a bowl. Use a wooden spoon to push the pulp through so that the juice collects in the bowl.
Discard the seeds left in the sieve, then add the mascarpone cheese, orange curd and grate orange zest to the bowl as well.
Mix everything together until fully combined. In a separate bowl, stir the cream until lightly whipped and then add that to the bowl as well.
Assemble everything together:
Spoon the mixture into the cake tin on top of the biscuit base, then use a spoon to smooth the top of the mixture.
Place in the fridge and chill for at least four hours, but preferably overnight, so that the cheesecake becomes firm.
Once the time is up, decorate the cheesecake with the pulp of the two remaining passion fruits and any leftover orange zest.
Your tasty fruity summer cheesecake is now ready to serve.
