This aromatic cranberry cheesecake is the very taste of snowy winter holidays. Just imagine spicy chocolate wrapping, creamy cheese filling, and thick fragrant cranberry sauce with a slight note of tartness… mm, delicious! The ideal sweet-sour balance of this cheesecake will make you lose control and literally devour it! All the steps being perfectly easy, the cheesecake doesn’t require lots of time to cook. So, allow yourself a bit of winter heaven!
You’ll need:
700 g cottage cheese, room temperature
200 ml heavy whipping cream (30% of fat or more)
4 eggs
200 g sugar
2 tbsp starch
1 tbsp semolina
1 orange’s zest, finely grated
For base:
200 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp Christmas spices’ mixture
1.5 tbsp cocoa powder
100 g sugar
100 g chilled butter, chopped
1 egg yolk
For cranberry sauce:
300 g fresh or frozen cranberry
50 g sugar
1 orange’s zest and juice
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 tsp starch
2 tbsp water
Small piece of fresh ginger
20 cm springform cake tin
Preparation:
1. Pre-heat oven to 160oC.
2. For the base, mix flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, spice mixture, and sugar.
3. Add butter and yolk, and mix until homogeneity.
4. Cover the cake tin with parchment paper, and spread the base evenly, pressing it into the tin and making sides. Put the tin into the fridge until the cheesecake mixture is ready.
5. Mince the cottage cheese in a meat grinder 2-3 times (the more, the better).
6. Add cream, sugar, and orange zest, and whip until homogeneity.
7. Continue whipping while you add eggs (one at a time), starch and semolina. Do not overwhip: whip only until homogeneity!
8. Get the base out of the fridge and pour the cheese mixture in.
9. Bake the cheesecake for about an hour until it somewhat browns, but the center remains slightly fluid. Turn off the oven and let the cheesecake cool down inside.
10. When it is finally cooled, put it in the fridge for 8 hours.
11. Meanwhile, prepare the cranberry sauce. Put all the ingredients for it, except starch, in a pan over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat to min, and cook it, stirring from time to time, until the cranberry begins to split.
12. Mix the starch with water and add it to the sauce. Cook until the sauce thickens, but keep in mind that the sauce will continue thickening while cooling down.
13. Remove the spices from the sauce and pour it (still warm!) over the cheesecake (straight on the top). The cheesecake may be served immediately.
Bon appetite!
NB: All the ingredients for the cheesecake should be of room temperature!
P.S. I highly recommend you to prepare the Christmas spices’ mixture yourself. For this, mix 10 g cinnamon, 3 g dried ginger, 3 g cardamom, 3 g cloves, 2 g nutmeg, 2 g allspice, 2 g star anise, and 1 g black pepper. Grind all the spices and keep them in a hermetically sealed container. If needed, you can increase the number of ingredients, but keep the proportion.