Mike van de Elzen: Yoghurt Cheesecake with blackberries

The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

Mike van de Elzen shares tips to make desserts go better, and be easier to serve on the big day (Christmas!), plus shares his favourite sweet in the world - cheesecake.

• Choose desserts that can be prepared and easily stored for the day
• These can include cheesecakes, panna cotta, classic pavlova. tiramisu, brandy christmas cake and brandy ice-cream or the old classic trifle.
• Dessert that you can freeze can be handy. These could include cookies, brownies or Christmas mince pies.
• Texture's are important when serving multiple desserts. Try not to have everything soft. Break it up with a crunchy crumble, broken biscuits and nuts.
• Lighten the heavy creams up with fresh fruit. Strawberries, blackberries and boysenberries are in season and are perfect fat cutters.

Yoghurt Cheesecake with blackberries

Prep time: 30 minutes

Serves: 6

250gm cream cheese

200gm plain yoghurt

4 sheets gelatine

1 vanilla pod

2 Tbsp honey

1 packet plain Digestive biscuits, crushed

1 can blackberries

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp icing sugar

1 punnet fresh blackberries

Place the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water to soften for 5 minutes. Drain the water then pour 1/2 cup boiling water over the sheets and stir. Put the cream cheese, yoghurt and honey in the bowl of a food processor. Scrape in the seeds from the vanilla pod and blitz until all combined.

Add half of the gelatine mix and blitz again.

Crush the biscuits until crumbly but not too fine. Divide between 6 jars (about 300ml capacity) to a depth of about 2cm. Spoon the cheesecake mix over the top of the biscuit base.

Clean the processor bowl then put the tin of blackberries in with the brown sugar. Blitz until smooth, then pass through a sieve to remove the seeds. Combine with the rest of the gelatine mix. Spoon this over the top of the cheesecake and refrigerate for about an hour or until set. Top the cheesecakes with some fresh blackberries and dust with icing sugar to serve.

Find Mike at goodfromscratch.co.nz

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