I was so excited when I thought of using blueberry puree to make some beautiful dark purple marbling on the cheesecakes. But the puree was more like reddish brown color which was far from what I expected! I saw people's blueberry puree was quite purple. Wonder why mine wasn't purple at all. I tried to rectify it by adding some lilac food coloring and hopefully they would turn out beautifully like how I wanted but it still stayed ugly brownish. So instead of putting the puree on top of the cheesecakes, I just hide them sadly in the cream cheese batter. I would recommend to skip the blueberry puree step and just use fresh blueberries to garnish.
I should have filled the cupcake liners to almost full as I knew cheesecakes won't rise much but the recipe said fill it to 3/4 full. That makes my cupcakes look so small. I filled the second batch to almost full and baked for 20 minutes. They came out a bit too soft. Need to bake for probably 3 more minutes with more batter in it.
Apart from all those negatives, the cheesecakes this time do not break or sink and are much smoother and creamier compared to my first attempt. I'm not sure whether it's because I beat the batter as little as possible, added cream in the batter, hit the cupcake pan hard on table to get rid of extra air bubbles, use a hot water bath to increase the moisture in the oven or a combination of all of the above. Overall, hubby and I loved the cakes very much. The clean lemony flavor was impeccable with the creamy cheesecakes!
Sharing with other lemon and cheesecake lovers.
Ingredients
For the crust
7 digestive biscuits
30g unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp sugar
For blueberry puree
100g blueberry
some extra blueberries for garnish
For filling
335g cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice
12 lemon slices for garnish
Directions
- Preheat oven to 160C. Line cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
- Crush the digestive biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). In a small bowl, combine the crumbs, melted butter and sugar. Stir together with a fork until well blended and all the dry ingredients are moistened. Put 1 1/2 tbsp of the mixture into the bottom of each cupcake liner and evenly press the crumbs down by the bottom of a glass. Bake until just set, 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack.
- To make the blueberry puree, blend it in food processor and pour through fine mesh sieve.
- To make the cheesecake, beat the cream cheese, heavy cream and sugar on low speed in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy (do not overbeat it).
- Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by vanilla extract, lemon juice and lemon zest, mixing well after each addition.
- Rap the mixer bowl hard on your counter to knock out the air bubbles trapped inside the filling.
- Spoon the mixture over the crust bases to almost full. Dot a 1/2 tsp of the blueberry puree in a few dots over the cheesecake filling. Use a toothpick to lightly swirl and create marbling effect.
- Put the cupcake pan in a hot water bath about halfway up (use a larger pan containing boiling water in which to place the smaller cupcake pan) and bake for 20 minutes.
- Let cool for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature. Transfer to refrigerator and let chill for at least 4 hours before serving.
- Serve with lemon slice on top.
Recipe barely adapted from lemon cheesecake cupcakes
Tips of baking cheesecake to avoid cracking and sinking
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