No bake Berry Cheesecake
This is a very yummy, eye-catching, wow-your-guests kind of dessert. This isnt very difficult to make but there are quite a few elements involved and just takes some time, but it is totally worth it. You could choose any flavor you like - mango, berries, pineapple. I have done this before with mango and blogged about it here Mango Cheesecake- and it was a super hit recipe at home.
Ingredients
Serves 3
Philadelphia Cream Cheese - 1/2 cup
Castor Sugar - 1/4 cup
Fresh Cream - 1/3 cup
Strawberry-Raspberry pulp - 1 cup
Gelatin - 1 tbspn
Digestive bisuits powdered - 1 cup
Melted butter - 4 Tbspn
Cashews - 5
Sugar - 1 tbspn
Vanilla essence - 1/2 tspn
Method
Base of the cake
Powder the biscuits along with the cashews and 1tbspn sugar to make about 1 cup. Mix it well with melted butter . Now bring out 3 serving glasses and spoon this into each of them and press them to make the base of the cheesecake. Put it inside the fridge. Let it stay in the fridge while you proceed with the second layer to make the cheesecake filling as below.
Cheescake mixture
This consists of the three steps as below
Step 1- Strawberry - gelatin mix
Firstly take some equal amount of fresh starwberry and raspberry with required amount of sugar to make about 1 cup of pulp. In a cup, pour about 2-3 tspn of cold water along with gelatin and stir the gelatin with hand. Now add 2-3 tspn of hot water over this - stir and let the gelatin completely dissolve. Mix the strawberry pulp with the dissolved gelatin and keep aside.
Step 2 -Whipped Fresh Cream
Whip the fresh cream separately and keep aside.
Final Cream cheese mix
Now mix the cream cheese and castor sugar well for 2-3 minutes to get a smooth texture. Pour 3/4th of the strawberry pulp mixture prepared in step1 [remaining is to be used for topping] and all of the whipped cream [step 2] and vanilla essence onto the cream-cheese/sugar mixture.
Now take out the glasses from the fridge and fill 3/4 of the glass with the cheesecake mixture. Now return to fridge and refreigerate for 1.5 hrs for it to set.
Topping
After 1.5 hrs, bring the glasses, gently spoon in the the remainining strawberry pulp on top of the cheesecake mixture in each glass. Referigerate for 5-6 hrs, for best results cool it overnight. And there we have our beautiful cheesecake ready.
Note:
You can always substitute hung curd for cream cheese, as cream cheese is expensive and difficult to get in India.
Gelatin is a meat by-product, so if you are strictly vegan, use china-grass [agar-agar] instead.
Also the quantities in each layer can be adjusted as per taste/need.