Mango Cheesecake

I was very excited about trying a baked cheesecake for the first time. And touchwood, it came out perfectly! I baked a plain cheesecake at first and then made a mango jelly topping and put it in the fridge to set. Now all cheesecake recipes make you bake it in a springform pan, which is basically a pan with a detachable base. Since I don't have one, I used my regular cake mould and lined it with butter paper sticking out over the edges so that I could remove it easily. Now this would obviously screw up the shape a little, but then we are going to eat it, not look at it :P.

The first thing to make is the base. For that you need
2.5 cups digestive biscuit crumbs
4 ounces or 113g of butter (melted)
2tbsp sugar

Combine the sugar with the digestive biscuit crumbs. Stir in the melted butter until moistened. Pour the mixture into a 9 inch springform pan (about 3 inches tall) and make a layer 1 inch thick. Bake for in 10 min in an oven heated to 325 F or approx 160 C.
As my cake mould is heart-shaped, it wasn't the same size, so I made the amount specified in the recipe, and ended up using it for two cakes.

To make the batter you need
4 (8oz.) packages cream cheese (approx 900g)
1.5 cups sugar
3 Tbsp flour
5 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 Tbsp lemon juice

To make the cheesecake filling, cream the sugar, cream cheese and flour until light and fluffy. On medium low, add eggs one at a time, mixing well with each addition. On low, add sour cream, lemon juice and vanilla just until combined. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes at 325.

As mine was smaller, I baked mine for only 40 min. After the cake is done, let it cool in the oven for 5-10 min and then take it out. It may crack at this point. Mine did a little. To avoid this, you can bake it in a water bath, but I didn't have a pan big enough for that so I let it be. Keep it out until it reaches room temperature.

For the mango topping, I squeezed the juice outta two mangoes, dumped half a cup of sugar and heated the pulp with a teaspoon of cornflour until the sugar dissolved. I had kept a teaspoon of gelatin in cold water for about 5 min. This I dissolved in a water bath and mixed it with the mango pulp, poured it on top of the cheesecake and let it set.

When I tried to take it out later, the baking paper tore at the sides because the topping is wet-ish. So I couldn't unmould the cake. When the time came to eat it, we just cut slices directly out of the mould. I had called a whole bunch of people for dinner and I was REALLY hoping that it would taste good....which it did finally :). I will definitely try this again and experiment with toppings and find some way to be able to present it!