As good as it gets

Last weekend I met a friend at the california bakery for a saturday brunch in Milan.Seeing all the baked goods and all the cakes you could just dream of, made me feel like going home and prepare a big , thick ,fatty cheese cake. On the way home I told my friend that I heard a scandenavian woman once say: "I never ate a good cake in Italy" and that just made me think cheese cake!

Well, there are plenty of good cakes in Italy, but I could hardly find a place that makes a real good cheese cake, except the california bakery of course.
I started to look arround and I found this simple cheese cake recipe on the coo.kie fairy
I skipped the glazing part at the end and I left the strawberries without any glaze.It would be a good idea though to glaze the strawberries in order to maintain their freshness .I didn't need that since cake was diminished withen a day and a half :-)




Cheese cake with strawberries

Ingredients

For the crust

250 gr biscuits (like graham crackers)
120 gr butter
1/3 cup brown sugar

Filling

600 gr cream cheese (like philadelphia)
200 gr sugar
3 Tbs lemon juice
2 1/2 ts vanilla extract
1/8 ts salt
3 Tbs all purpose flour
5 eggs

Coating

2 cups sour cream
3 Tbs sugar
1/2 ts vanilla extract
2-3 cups fresh strawberries
1/2 cup strawberry or raspberry jam


Crust:
Preheat oven to medium heat 160° and put all dry ingredients of crust in a food prossesore until you get a sticky crumbs. Stick the crust to the base of a ring pan (24 cm) and on the sides and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.Let cool aside.

Filling:
In a large mixing bowl, mix together cream cheese,sugar,lemon juice, vanilla and salt just until incorporated.
Add flour and mix a little bit.Then add eggs, one at a time, and mix until combined.
Pour the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit crust and bake for 55 minutes until surface is light gold and some light cracks have formed.
Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Coating:
Mix together all coating ingredients and pour on top of the cake,bake for 5 minutes until coating on cake is stable.
Cool for 10 minutes then separate the cake from sides of ring pan and chill in the fridge over a night.
Cut srawberries and arrange on a cake in circles. Heat the strawberry jam with 3 Tbs water and after cooling a bit ,pour thinned jam on the strawberries.

Enjoy!








Note: In order to keep the crust crispy and in order to avoid falling down the sides during baking, freeze the crust with the pan half an hour in the freezer before baking.