Easter citrusy no-bake cheese cake

I am spending this Easter in Canada visiting my fellow Gourmandine blogger, Dorthe. While I’m here, Dorthe has been kind enough to invite Andrea, one of her lovely Canadian friends, over for dinner. I find it only fitting to try and dazzle her with my cake skills to make a good impression, so I’ve decided to make an Easter version of this flavorful citrus cheese cake.

Baking cakes takes time and precision and knowledge of the oven you are working with. Since I’m not in my own kitchen I want to make a cake that I am sure will be a success, because it doesn’t even have to go in the oven. I have made this cake many times before, and it’s very hard to not get it right. This one is made with lime, but you can also substitute the lime with lemon to get a different and slightly more fragrant flavor. But both versions taste amazing in my humble opinion.

Citrus cheese cake with lime (makes 12 slices)

Ingredients

Crust

8 oz (250 g) Digestive biscuits

4 oz (125 g) melted salted butter

2 tbsp. caster sugar

Filling

2 tubs Philadelphia cheese (2 x 8oz or 2 x 200g)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz or 400 g)

1/3 cup (75 g) key lime juice (or ordinary lime juice)

1 tbsp key lime zest (or ordinary lime zest)

1 cup (250 ml) whipping cream

½ cup (50 g) confectionary sugar

1 tsp bourbon vanilla extract (or seeds from ½ a vanilla bean)

For Easter decoration

Small store-bought sugarcoated Easter chocolate eggs

A few blackberries, sliced in halves

About 2 oz (50 g) white chocolate, tempered and poured carefully onto crumpled baking paper to look like tree branches. (Don’t worry about perfection. If the chocolate forms unevenly it will actually look more like branches.)

Directions

Crust

1. Put the biscuits in an electric chopper and crush them into tiny crumbs. (Or, if you don’t own an electric chopper, simply put the biscuits in a sealed plastic bag and use a rolling pin to mash them into crumbs. This can actually be quite satisfying :)). Add the sugar to the crumbs and turn on the chopper for 10 seconds so it mixes into the biscuit crumbs.

2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the crumbs and stir well before transferring the mixture to a round 8 inch (20 cm) springform cake pan lined with baking paper at the bottom. Press the crumbs with your hands to make a smooth surface that covers the bottom of the pan.  

3. Put the cake pan in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes so the crust sets.

Filling

1. In a large bowl, beat the Philadelphia cheese with an electric mixer till it’s smooth, then add the condensed milk, lime juice and zest.

2. In another large bowl add the cream, sugar and vanilla extract (or vanilla bean seeds) and whip till the creams start forming peaks.

3. Gently fold the cream mixture into the cheese mixture until they become one smooth cream. Then pour the mixed cream into the baking pan on top of the biscuit crust. Make sure that there are no air pockets along the sides and that the top surface is nice and smooth.

4. Put the citrus cheese cake back in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours, or even better for a day or two. When you want to take the cake out of the cake pan, start by moving a very sharp thin knife along the inner sides of the pan, before you loosen the springform. I sometimes heat up the knife by using hot running water before doing this. The cake should be easy to loosen at the bottom since it’s lined with baking paper. Gently peel off the baking paper and place the citrus cheese cake on a serving tray. You can serve it like it is or decorate it with small Easter chocolate eggs, white chocolate ‘tree’ branches and blackberries like I did as you see in the picture.

Enjoy!

Would you like more inspiration for amazing Easter cakes?

Try this delicious Easter carrot cake: