Amazing And Delicious Italian Cheesecake

Filling :

500 g Mascarpone cheese

400 g Ricotta cheese

4 Eggs

1 Lemon

2 teaspoons Vanilla bean or vanilla extract

125 g Caster sugar

1 full tablespoon Flour

Base:

250 g crushed digestive biscuits

150 g melted butter

Blackberry Topping:

400 g Blackberries (plus a handful for the finish)

2 tablespoons Caster sugar

Raspberries for the finish

Hazelnuts for the finish

Grease and line a 24cm spring form cake tin with a baking paper and preheat the oven to 180ºC. First you need to prepare the base, because it will need to cool down while you preparing the filling. Mix the biscuits and butter in a bowl, press it into the base of the tin and cook for 10 minutes. Remove it from the oven and let it cool.

Now turn the oven down to 160ºC. It’s time to prepare the filling for the cheesecake. Combine the sugar and flour in a bowl. Add the mascarpone and the ricotta cheese and beat with an electric whisk until creamy. Gradually add the eggs, beating until smooth, then beat in the vanilla.

After adding the zest and juice of one lemon, try the filling and see if it fits your taste. It should be creamy with a hit of freshness and sourness from the lemon. That’s what you want to accomplish, a little surprise, but not too big because you don’t want the sourness to become the key flavour and overcome the richness of the cheese.

Add the mixture into the tin, level the surface and sit on a baking sheet and place in the centre of the oven. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until the top gets light golden.

While the cheesecake is baking, the best thing now is to prepare the blueberry topping. You can substitute the blackberries with cherries, that will be an excellent choice! Add the blackberries and the sugar into a sauce pan with a little bit of water over a low-medium heat. Let it simmer gently for 10 minutes. Cool and serve on top of the cheesecake, along with the rest of the blackberries, raspberries and hazelnuts.