We say goodbye to another year, and begin a new one. So welcome to 2019 and the first blogpost of the year. 2018 went by so fast and was extremely eventful. I hope to post more regularly this year, with more recipes and even some savoury food and also art.
Beyond Our Sky will be undergoing some redesigning soon, but I’m still waiting for some technical things to be complete. Thank you so much for all the support last year, including the likes, comments and follows. It’s always so crazy seeing all my photos being reposted or being pinned on Pinterest, and hearing lovely comments that you are inspired by Beyond Our Sky. So I hope you enjoy this post.
For this blogpost, I used a recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks – Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. It is an usual sort of cheesecake, since it does not require chilling or feature a biscuit base. Ottolenghi actually recommends that the dessert should be served warm, and it is absolutely delicious. So I hope you had a fantastic year, and are ready to begin the next!!
Ricotta and Hazelnut Cheesecake
Recipe adapted from Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh.
Cheesecake
- 300g blanched hazelnuts
- 35g plain flour
- 160g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped
- 100g almond meal
- 225 unsalted butter, room temperature, roughly cubed
- 250g caster sugar
- 6 large eggs, seperated
- 400g ricotta cheese
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease the sides of an individual cheesecake pan or large spring-form pan, and line the sides with baking paper (it should be 2cm above the top of the tin).
- Spread the hazelnuts on a large baking tray and roast for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely (when warm nuts are blitzed, it will result in an oily paste).
- Roughly chop 50g of the hazelnuts and set aside for decoration. Place the remainder of the nuts in a food processor, along with the flour. Blitz until fine and transfer into a medium bowl. Place the chocolate in the food processor, and blitz to form large crumbs and add these to the hazelnuts and flour. Add the almond meal, and mix together then set aside (the texture will be course and rustic).
- Increase the oven temperature to 190°C.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together on medium high speed for 5 minutes. Once light and pale in colour, add the egg yolks one at a time beating well in between each addition. Reduce the speed to low, then add the chocolate, nut and flour mixture and beat until just combined. Remove the bowl from the machine and stir in the ricotta, vanilla extract and salt. Set this cake mix aside.
- In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites on medium-high speed until stiff. Using a large spatula, fold the egg whites into the cake mix in 3 batches – ensuring there are no streaks of egg white.
- Transfer the batter in the lined cheesecake tins, filling all the way to the top. Bake for 30-35 minutes if using individual tins, or 1 hour if using a large tin. It is complete when a skewer inserted into the centre has some crumbs, but is not completely wet. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool completely. Then remove from the tin and peel off baking paper. Set aside until ready to decorate with ganache.
Chocolate Water Ganache
- 100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped
- 40g caster sugar
- 40g liquid glucose
- 70mL water
- 1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthwise and scraped
- 40g unsalted butter, roomed temperature, roughly chopped
- Place chocolate in a medium bowl and set aside.
- Place sugar and glucose in a saucepan. Stir to combine and bring to the boil over medium-low heat. Once sugar has heated, increase the heat to medium-high and boil until it reaches a pale amber colour, stirring occasionally. This will take about 5 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and add the water. Don’t worry if the mixture seizes: just return the pan to the heat, bring to the boil and add the vanilla seeds. Allow it to cool for two minutes.
- Pour this mixture over the chocolate, allow to sit for 3 minutes, and stir until completely smooth. Add the butter, a cube at a time, whisking until completely glossy and smooth.
- To assemble, dust the cakes with icing sugar, then pour over the ganache ensuring it drips down the sides and sprinkle over reserved nuts.
- Then serve and enjoy!