Cheesecake with apple almond topping

"If happiness were a cake"... An article with that title couldn't stay without attention. Because I'm pretty sure a tasty cake is our happiness. Especially a cake that will follow in this post. I have to admit that free magazines are sometimes even more useful than you think. One of those, as you already understood, enclosed a precious recipe of my favorite C-H-E-E-S-E-C-A-K-E ;)

As a naughty girl I can't cook strictly following the recipe. So I grabbed all I needed and was ready to bake my own interpretation. A good thing is that you can always add what you like or reduce the quantity of harmful ingredients and meanwhile create a new recipe. That means being creative. And it keeps you always full of ideas.

Ingredients:

1 kg low fat cottage-cheese

200 g creme fraiche
2 bananas
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 vanilla pod, seeds scraped
5 eggs
zest from 1 lemon
1 pack of vanilla pudding powder
2 middle-sized apples
2 tbsp almond leaves
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180° C.

Separate egg whites from yolks in different bowls. Put the egg whites into fridge. Meanwhile mix yolks with 2 tbsp of sugar and mashed bananas. Add vanilla seeds, mix well. Now its turn of cheese. I usually take low-fat cheese. If you prefer any other, go ahead. We're here to make baking interesting and personal. Put cheese of your choice, pudding powder and lemon zest into yolk-banana-sugar mixture. Mix thoroughly.

Now leave it all aside and get the egg whites out of the fringe.

Tip!
A perfection of majority desserts is achieved through the structure. It is main advantage of using egg whites. Light, melting in your mouth, a piece of heaven... Yes. All you need is to beat the whites until stiff peaks. For that important task use better a copper, stainless-steel, or glass bowl. Make sure there are no traces of yolk, water or fat. They might be the reason of a bad result. Add a pinch of salt. Start beating at small speed and then increase it. Beat whites until you have stiff peaks. You can easily check the right condition if you title the bowl. The mixture should not slide around. When adding beaten egg whites to another mixture, immediately fold them gently into it. That way a volume will not be destroyed.

Middle-step overview: choose any topping you prefer and leave some place for fantasy ;)

Beat egg whites as explained in a tip below. Fold the carefully into cheese mixture and get a big baking form of 28 cm in diameter. Pour the ready cheesecake mixture into the form. Cover the bottom of the form with foil and place it in a bath. In other words, take a bigger form and pour 1-2 glasses of water into it. That would be a bath for our form with cheesecake. If you have no bigger form you can use just any heat resistant folder with water as a bath. Put it then on the bottom of your oven. This trick will insure you a velvety structure of the cake. And believe me, that is something worth to reach.

 
Baking time - 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 140° C and bake 20-30 minutes more. It depends on the height of the cake. The higher - the longer baking time.

After that let it cool down until room temperature. I know this might be a challenge in some sense. But I have another task for you meanwhile - topping. It consists of 2 main parts. For the first one heat some butter in a pan and add 1 tsp of sugar. As the mixture is warm, put in apple slices and cinnamon. Caramelize from all sides until a bit softer. For second part heat the rest of sugar in a saucepan, add butter and almond leaves. For 2-3 minutes let them get golden color and sweet flavor. That's it.

Last and final step - decorate the cheese basis with apple slices and almond leaves.

Voilà - happy cheesecake is ready to surprise you with a range of flavors.

Just be careful not to get addicted ;)