Double Crumble Strawberry Cheesecake

Now that Raya is about a week away, me and my sisters have started our "Raya baking", hehe. Of course, with the various sungkai gatherings we've had, especially with the family, we've had plenty of oppurtunity to practice and perfect our recipes. ;) This particular recipe is a case in point. One afternoon, right before a family gathering, we were determined to use up our frozen strawberries. Looking around online, we found this recipe, and fiddled around with it a little to suit our purposes. So, here we go!


What you need:

Crumble layer:
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 egg yolks
1 cup caster sugar
150g unsalted butter
Pinch of salt

Strawberry cheesecake layer:

500g cream cheese
3 medium eggs + white of 1 egg
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
400g strawberries, hulled and sliced - we used frozen

What you do:

1. Grease and line a 10-inch square baking tin.
2. Add in all ingredients for the crumble layer in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Or, you can mix with your hands until they are well-combined and have a crumble texture.
3. Spread half of the crumbs evenly over the bottom of the baking tin and press down gently.
4. In another bowl, combine all ingredients for the cheese layer and mix until well-combined. Because our cream cheese was still stiff from the refrigerator, we used a hand blender to make a smooth mixture.
5. In a small bowl, beat the egg white until soft peaks form (using an electric mixer) and fold into the cheese mixture. Add in a handful of the sliced strawberries and beat using the electric mixer until combined.
6. Carefully pour the cheese mixture over the crumbs in the baking tin. Arrange the rest of the strawberries on top of the cheese and sprinkle the rest of the crumble over the top.
7. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 C for 35 minutes. Reduce heat to 160 C and bake for another 35 minutes. Ensure that cheese is set and not jiggly before removing from oven. Leave to cool completely in the tin before placing in the refrigerator to chill for a couple of hours or overnight. Serve cold, garnished with fresh strawberries if you like.

My, that's pretty. I've always liked recipes with crumble. They don't look elegant, but they look charmingly home-made! Hehe. The reason we decided to do this in a square tin was because that would be easier to cut into small bite-sized pieces. Because we didn't want the cake to be as thick as a normal piece of cake, we also decided to halve the cheese layer but keep the original amount of the crumble layer as, in our opinion, the crumb is the best part of the cheesecake! ;)

Because we did this sort of at the last minute, we didn't have time to cool the cake properly. After cutting off a portion for home and doing a quick photo shoot, it was off to our aunt's place for sungkai. Sorry if the pictures are a bit messy, haha. The cheesecake layer was still very hot and wasn't that firm yet. Anyway, at our aunt's, we placed the cake in the freezer for about an hour or so before cutting it into squares. People were definitely appreciative of it, I think. Again, the younger generation were particularly enamored of it, though not the children. I don't think most children appreciate cheesecake at their age. They all particularly liked the crumble layer, and I got some inquiries as to what it was made of. There were also some grumbles about lost diets, haha. Alas, since it was after sungkai, people were already quite full, but somehow or other, everything was gone by the end of the night, so that's all good. =)

Cut to the portion we have at home. That one has been chilling for almost a whole night by the time we dug into it. And I must say, it was even better. Very thick and creamy and cool. Babah was quite a big fan of it (as well as Izzah, who loves strawberry cheesecake). Babah thought that the textures and flavours were really great - creamy yet crunchy, sweet yet a bit sour... between the two of them, they probably ate the most, haha. Though that was partly because the boys didn't dare finish up the cake, but never mind.

In any case, this was a success, I think. Not bad for a last minute recipe. Someone on the tagboard had asked if I had a recipe for blueberry cheesecake, which I don't, but you could probably replace the strawberries with blueberries if you'd like. Also, if you're interested, the blogger of the original recipe had also posted a recipe for Blueberry and Chocolate Crumb Cheesecake, which very similar to this strawberry cheesecake recipe and looks good too! I want to try that chocolate crumble some day... So yes, unknown, if you'd like, you can use that one. Very similar to this recipe, which turned out to be quite a success, so that one should be nice as well.

We're not quite sure if we would be making this for Raya though. Since it's very rich, not sure if people would be able to take it, after hitting loads of houses, haha. But never mind. This would make an awesome cake. Just double the cheese layer and use a couple of round cake tins and decorate with a few strawberries.... pretty! =D I bet whoever you are making it for would appreciate it. I would even double the crumble layer some more. The crumble is really really good!

Anyway, this is it for now. See you at my next post. =)

Quote of the day: We were getting 1,000 inquiries a week. Once we got nearly 1,000 responses for a recipe for diet cheesecake!