Retrospective; Ugly!Cheesecake

In July last year, a friend of mine celebrated a birthday I will mention no further (as he is very old (ohohoho)). I offered to bake him something and asked what I should bring. He said cheesecake.

Having never made a cheesecake, (I know, isn't that tragic?) I sat down a researched and bought my ingredients (whipping cream, marscapone, biscuits and butter for the crumb base) and pondered flavours.

Summer 2011 saw and incredible fruit yield due to the favourable spring conditions bringing on fruit early and in abundance. Blackberries that would have normally still been unripe at that time were in full fruit, laden with sweet, ebony berries just begging to be picked and guzzled in handfuls.

Upon dropping my then boss' heavily pregnant wife home at the end of the work day, I parked up near a large patch of blackberries I had spotted often on the same journey into south London. Being non-native, she was always fascinated by the wild fruit I would point out on our journeys, trees drooping with fat, ripe plums, early aples and those still ripening. It sometimes feels like all our ancient english orchards were made into A roads, and the landscapers forgot to tidy up around the edges, leaving these beautiful forgotten bounties to smash, overripe, pulpy and unwanted onto the road side year after year, to be picked over by birds or pulverised by speeding tires.

I digress.

Within fifteen minutes, with only a few bramble scrapes, I had a healthy haul of blackberries, more than I really needed for the coolis to flavour to the cheesecake. Once home, a quick clean and a sort left me with about 150g of free, wild fruit. Blended with two tablespoons of golden caster sugar, it made a florally fragrant, mellow and fruity deep blue purple sauce, ready for greater things.

A few pulverised digestives later, mixed with melted butter and a teaspoon or so of spice (cinnamon, ginger, clove and nutmeg) and the base was done. The main part of the cheesecake was the whipped cream, marscapone and sugar, mixed together lovingly, which kept the filling light, which I found delightful, as cheesecake can be over dense for my tastes. I pored this in in quarters, at each interval spooning in a quarter and muddling it with the coolis/sauce/delicious blackberry goop. When cut, the cheesecake was full of ribbons and swirls of purple. Yum.

On the top, I just let the coolis drop with as much artistry as possible.

All in all, it wasn't the prettiest cheesecake there has ever been, nor the tidiest. But it was bloody delicious. Num.