Passionfruit Cheesecake

Cheesecake, you either love it or you hate it and my house has always been divided. Well everybody loves it, and me, not so much... and seeing I am the one who tends to do most of the cooking, we don't often eat cheesecake. I'm not sure why I never liked it, maybe I just had one bad one and figured they were all like that - who knows. But what I do know, is that this recipe has me converted. Now that I've found one cheesecake I like, I'm looking forward to experimenting with other cheesecake flavours... watch this space. 

Passionfruit cheesecake is the Mr's all time ultimate favourite. It tops all other cakes and desserts. With passionfruit being in season, I thought I had better make him his favourite. Because this was such novelty in our house, I figured I better make a darn good one, so I trawled the internet and found literally hundreds of passionfruit cheesecake recipes, both baked and set with gelatine, some with the passionfruit mixed through, others layered on top. So I did what I do best, and followed all of them and none of them at the same time, taking different components from each, and adding my own twist, with a hint of ground ginger in the base. 

The result: A little (or large) slice of perfection! 

Ingredients (serves 8-12, depending who's eating it, if it was just my husband, you'd only get 6 slices!) 

BASE

• 250g packet of milk arrowroot biscuits
• 125g butter, melted
• 2 tbsp ground ginger

FILLING

• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1 tbsp gelatine powder
• 10 passionfruit
• 375g cream cheese, room temperature (equates to 1 & 1/2 tubs) 
• 1 cup cream
• 2/3 cup caster sugar

TOPPING 

• 5 - 6 passionfruit
• 1 tbsp sugar 
• 3/4 - 1 tsp gelatine powder
• 1 - 2 drops yellow food colouring
• hot water 

Prepare a round 25cm springform tin, by lining the base with non-stick baking paper. 

Place the biscuits into a food processor and blitz on high until they are finely crushed. Add ground ginger and blitz quickly to mix. Add melted butter and mix to combine.

Pour buttered biscuit crumbs into the bottom of the tin and use the back of a spoon to press firmly and evenly across the tin. Cover and set aside in the fridge to set. 

To make the filling, place the passionfruit pulp into a sieve over a bowl and use the back of a spoon to press the juice from the pulp. Reserve the pulp and seeds.*

Use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth, add the cream and passionfruit juice, mix well again. 

Put the hot water into a small bowl and sprinkle over the tablespoon of gelatine. mix to combine and allow to cool only slightly before pouring into and mixing with the cream cheese mixture. Pour all of this into the tin on top of the base. Spoon the reserved pulp on top and use a knife to swirl through the cheesecake mixture. Smooth over, cover and chill 

Finally prepare the passionfruit jelly for the top**. Scoop pulp from the remaining passionfruit, you should have about half a cup. Measure half a cup of hot water, stir in the sugar till dissolved, then stir in 3/4 of a teaspoon of gelatine (use 1 tsp if you prefer a firmer jelly, I like mine relatively runny, so that you can't actually tell it's jelly). Add the gelatine water to the passionfruit pulp and mix well to combine. You should have 1 cup altogether, if not, you may need to add a little water to make it up to a cup. Finally add a couple of drops of yellow food colouring to make it look really 'passionfruity'. Bring to room temperature before gently pouring over the top of the cheesecake. 

Cover and chill for at least four hours before serving. 

*The separating the passionfruit step can be left out if you're in a rush (or just feeling a bit lazy!), however I find that it helps to give the cream cheese a real passionfruit flavour. 

**The jelly on the top is a crucial step in making this seem like an authentic cheesecake. I only used 3/4 of a teaspoon of gelatine though as I didn't want it to fully set.