drum roll… my first beau­ti­ful pud

Would any of you, many of whom have been given fairly scary (or sim­ply bor­ing) pud­dings at my house, BELIEVE that I cooked this myself? And it tasted good, too. I hon­estly can­not tell you the howls of glee that emanated from me when this lovely dessert was finally plated up in my kitchen on Sun­day after­noon. Let me tell you more.

I have been in a pos­i­tive marathon of cook­ing lately, due to the pig­gy­back­ing of two very impor­tant din­ner par­ties in my life, on Sun­day and Mon­day. I have lain awake many hours try­ing to think what starter, what main course, what salad, and finally, ago­nis­ingly, what pud. Not to men­tion did I have enough truly proper forks for three courses for 10 peo­ple? It turns out I did, but did I have enough nap­kins for two par­ties in a row? Yep, I did. But these thorny ques­tions and deci­sions took up a lot of time. As a result, how­ever, I have two fab­u­lous party menus to give you, both of which are easy and requir­ing no spe­cial exper­tise. What the fab­u­lous pud does require, how­ever, is a kitchen imple­ment new to my kitchen, but for which I have been long­ing for some months now: a steel ring, for presentation.

I know, it sounds unbear­ably pre­ten­tious. But it’s indis­pens­able. Here’s how it works.

It’s like a tall-ish tuna-fish can with no top and no bot­tom, and made of a heav­ier mate­r­ial. But what you do is make your cheese­cake (or indeed your risotto, your par­fait of crab, gua­camole and oven-roasted toma­toes, or your scal­loped pota­toes), and you press your metal ring down onto the sur­face, lift it up, or pile the ingre­di­ents inside and lift it up, and there is… a per­fect cir­cu­lar serv­ing. I have tried it only with cheese­cake, mind you, but I feel cau­tiously opti­mistic that the same method will work with any­thing that isn’t des­per­ately wob­bly or liq­uidy. I am so excited, need­less to say. Because while I am fairly con­fi­dent family-feeding cook, I have long known that my food suf­fers from bad pre­sen­ta­tion. I tend to take a big spoon, scoop up a serv­ing of what­ever, and plop it on a plate, and then plop another thing down next to it, lay some aspara­gus spears next to that, and bob’s your uncle.

But watch­ing lots of cook­ing shows and eat­ing at some very chi-chi restau­rants in my fair city and abroad have taught me that… it’s just not enough. Ugly food isn’t as yummy. So I read a recipe for the rasp­berry cheese­cake while on our hol­i­day in Burgh Island, made a few changes (and would make even more changes next time, which I shall incor­po­rate in the recipe here), and thought, “If only I had a lit­tle metal ring.” So while in Isling­ton last week I dar­ingly acquired a set of rings (some tall and rather wide, and some shorter and not so wide), and had a go. I sim­ply can­not tell you of my mood when this glo­ri­ous thing appeared on the plate. You give it a try, now, do.

It’s funny: this recipe is one of those exam­ples of how Eng­lish and Amer­i­can are NOT the same lan­guage, nor the same cul­ture. Every­thing in it seems to need a trans­la­tion! Includ­ing the mea­sur­ing meth­ods: I am going to give you the United Kingdom’s (and most of the rest of the civilised world’s) method of not­ing quan­ti­ties in weight, not vol­ume. When I make it next, I’ll trans­late every­thing into cups instead of grams, because I am fool­ish enough to pre­fer the way I’ve always done things to learn­ing some­thing new. When it involves maths, that is.

The recipe calls for “curd cheese,” which is a sort of com­bi­na­tion of cream cheese and cot­tage cheese, and is as far as I know not avail­able in the States. I did my shop­ping at a Lebanese food mar­ket, and so there was no curd cheese there, so I sub­sti­tuted cream cheese. John says he would pre­fer the cheese­cake to have a lighter heft, so prob­a­bly curd cheese would achieve that. I’ll obvi­ously be mak­ing this again, so I’ll play around and let you know if any­thing here should be altered.

Rasp­berry Cheese­cake with Fresh Rasp­berry Glaze
(serves ten, in pretty rings, with some scraps left over)

75 grams but­ter, melted
400 grams diges­tive bis­cuits (you could use gra­ham crack­ers in Amer­ica), whizzed till fine crumbs in your Mag­imix (that’s Cuisi­nart to you across the pond)
750 grams cream cheese
220 grams dou­ble cream (whip­ping cream in the States)
175 grams icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar back home), plus some to dust
36 grams corn­flour (corn­starch in the States)
4 eggs and 1 egg white, beaten
2 tsps vanilla extract
zest and juice of 1 lime
400 grams grams fresh rasp­ber­ries
2 tbsps Amaretto
1/2 cup caster sugar (in Amer­ica, ordi­nary white sugar will do)

Pre­heat (I actu­ally hate that word, I take it back). Heat your oven to 170 degrees cel­sius or about 325 fahren­heit. Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan with non­stick spray. In a medium bowl, mix the whizzed cook­ies with the melted but­ter and press the mix­ture into the pan.

In a large mix­ing bowl, mix cream cheese and cream with icing sugar and corn­flour. Then add eggs and vanilla and lime juice and zest and mix till smooth. Fold about half the rasp­ber­ries and pour onto the cookie base. Bake for 35 min­utes or until firmly set but not browned. Let cool on counter and then refrig­er­ate overnight.

Half an hour before serv­ing, count out five rasp­ber­ries per serv­ing of cheese­cake and set aside. The rest, put in a small saucepan with Amaretto and caster sugar and cook over medium heat until berries dis­in­te­grate com­pletely. Press through a fine sieve.

Now, the RING! Run the ring under hot water and press onto the cheese­cake at the outer edge (so as to make as many rings as pos­si­ble). Press until you feel the bot­tom of the pan, then lift up. Magic! Press it with your hand on the top of the cheese­cake ring onto a plate, very gin­gerly and grad­u­ally so as not to dent the cheese­cake and to get it out evenly. Place five rasp­ber­ries on the top, driz­zle with the glaze and dust with icing sugar. Voila!

I felt like The Queen. You will too. More recipes for your two super din­ner par­ties tomor­row. I have three chil­dren and a hus­band due back from Wicked! any moment and I must get sleep­over bed cosy for their return…