Let’s face it, if we could, we would ALWAYs reach for the baked cheesecake but when the chips are down and you have a quick craving to fix or a quick dessert to fix up, you KNOW you are looking at no bake options. (or Shahi tukdey if you are feeling desi) The perfect cheesecake, with a nice and light tangy filling paired with a rich buttery crumb base is sometimes all the therapy you need! What I love about this recipe is that it mimics the real deal perfectly. And since it has gelatin, you know it’ll set no matter how ever you mess it up.
A QUICK PICTORIAL OF THE NO BAKE CHEESE CAKE
Preparing the Biscuit base
I don’t know about you, but I loveeeee my cheesecake bases to be thick! Although of course I can’t expect all of you to share my guilty pleasures. So I’ve used a standard quantity of biscuits in the recipe (ugh boring) Anywhoo….so for the biscuits, I know ideally it should be graham crackers but I find them very rarely here in the supermarkets. So my next best go to biscuits are the digestive ones, they are low on butter and sugar so they work really well with the whole dessert. Go ahead and chuck in the biscuits in the food processor and make them into a fine powder. Add melted butter, and brown sugar and turn the processor around once more. For any no bake dessert, ideally, a spring-form pan is best! I greased my spring-form pan with a cooking spray. Make sure to also spray some of this generously on all the sides as well.
After greasing the pan, dump all the biscuit mix in the pan. And using a glass base to pack the biscuit in the pan has been the best hack discovery of 2019! Disclaimer: Whatever method you use to pack the biscuit crumbs in the base, make sure you are not packing it too hard and only applying pressure moderately. Packing the base too tightly can cause your crust to become very hard when it sets and will be difficult to cut.
Making the filling for the cheese cake
So here’s the deal, the biggest problem with no bake cheesecakes are that they lack that tangy flavor that their baked counterparts have. To fix this, adding a little sour-cream has been a GAME changer from me. I add in a little sour cream, cream cheese, castor sugar and vanilla essence all in one bowl and whisk them all together for 2 mins. Then I set this aside. In another bowl I whip up my double cream to give me soft peaks. Now since this dessert uses gelatin, you can get away with slightly runnier cream as well. You dessert will still set.
Once your cream is whipped and stiff, add it to the cream cheese mixture and lightly fold it in. On the side you need to bloom the gelatin. This is simply done by adding a little bit of luke warm water in gelatin powder and letting it sit for 5 mins. Add the bloomed gelatin to the cream mix, all the while constantly stirring with a whisk from the other hand. Now quickly pour all the mixture into your spring-form pan and keep in the fridge to refrigerate. 10 hrs of refrigeration time is minimum for the gelatin to set completely, and ideally letting is set in the fridge overnight is even better After you’ve left the cheesecake to chill overnight, take it out and top it off with any topping you like. I went with a blueberry topping/filling from Americana, hence this was called a Blueberry cheesecake.
Tips to get the perfect sides of the no bake cheesecake:
Alternates, fixes and Remixes
Substitute sour cream – You can use lemon juice insteadCream cheese – Since this dessert uses gelatin for setting, you can use any cream cheese you can get your hands on. The cream cheese spread, or the block one both can be used.If you feel like your dessert hasn’t set, let it sit in the fridge for a few more hours (although this is highly unlikely)
If you have any questions regarding gelatin, here’s an awesome post I found covering all the basics of using gelatin
No bake Blueberry Cheesecake
