Baking Advent Calendar day 16

I was at my fathers house at the weekend and I noticed that he had a picture on the wall from a trip that we made to New York a few years back to celebrate my 40th birthday. Two other friends came with us and the photo dad has was taken by one of them. In it my dad is watching me as i take a photo of the Flatiron building. Seeing the photo for the first time in years got me to reminiscing about the trip and you won’t be surprised to hear that most of my memories are food related. We were only in the city for four days but crammed so much in while we were there. We’d done some planning before we went but it was the unexpected things that are some of the strongest memories. Every corner that we turned seemed to have something that you recognised. Maddison Square Garden, The Chelsea Hotel, The Alqonquin Hotel and Radio City Hall were all places that I walked past by chance and had to go in

We got very friendly with the barman in out hotel  and on a couple of evening took cabs to restaurants that he had recommended. One of the restaurants was an Italian. We had to queue to get in but the result was some of the best food that I’ve ever eaten. Those memories prompted me to get New York Cult Recipes off the shelf and that’s why we’re having Italian style cheesecake for Baking Advent Calendar day 16.

You might have expected a New York style cheesecake but I find that I prefer the lighter texture of the Italian. The difference between the two being that the New York uses cream cheese where as the Italian uses ricotta.

Ingredients for the crust

• 125g plain flour
• 0.5tsp salt
• 50g ricotta cheese
• 50g unsalted butter, softened
• 100g icing sugar

Ingredients for the cheese filling

• 450 ricotta cheese
• 100g caster sugar
• 25g plain flour
• 2 eggs
• pinch of salt
• lemon juice
• 0.5tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for the decoration

• 100g strawberries
• icing sugar

Metod

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 8. Mix the crust ingredients until combined. I used a food processor but you can do this by hand.
• Butter the base and a third of the way up the sides of a 20cm spring form cake tin.
• Spread the crust mixture across the bottom of the tin.
• Whisk the cheese filling ingredients until smooth then pour into the tin on top of the crust.
• Bake for 15 minutes. When it comes out of the oven the centre of the cheesecake will still be wobbly.
• Leave in the run to cool.
• Decorate with strawberries and a little icing sugar before serving.