Bara Brith Inspired Caerphilly Cheesecake

Whenever I think of Wales, I always think of my trip as a child to Barry Island for the day when it was a Butlins resort. My Grandparents took my brother and I as, at the time, my Na’s sister and husband lived near Barry so we were taken to see them and enjoy the delights of the fair at Butlins. I will never forget the journey there – we lived in Newbury at the time so we lived much closer to my grandparents than we do now.

Anyway, my Nanny is a very chatty person and she and my Na will talk to anyone they meet ,and always knew what the history of the woman who worked on the checkout at their local supermarket  was the first time they met her! LOL. So anyway, we were travelling down the M4 to Wales, and obviously there were lots of cars driving in both directions, and my Nanny said wouldn’t it be good if every car had to say where it was going, and had a sign across its windscreen like a bus does depicting its destination!!! Ha ha that has always stuck in my mind! Funny how things do.

In terms of food, if I think of Wales I think of yummy things like Welsh Rarebit, leeks, Caerphilly cheese, Welsh cakes and Bara Brith.  To coincide with The Perfect Recipe” campaign where 5 big Food vloggers from the Jamie Oliver food tube network have all taken a trip to different parts of Wales to create their own Welsh recipe, I was asked to devise a recipe which summed up Wales for me. Wellll, it had to be a dessert, obviously, and my immediate thought was to make a cheesecake made with Caerphilly cheese. Then I thought about Bara Brith and the lovely spices and fruit that makes up the recipe, and decided to mix those flavours with the cheese in my cheesecake. Hence a Bara Brith Inspired Caerphilly Cheesecake was born.

Bara Brith Inspired Caerphilly Chesecake

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

75 mins

Total time

1 hour 35 mins

 

Author: Jenny Paulin

Serves: 12

Ingredients

• 50 g self raising flour
• 50g unsalted butter
• 250 g caster sugar
• 3 tsp of mixed spice
• 5 eggs
• 250g Caerphilly cheese, crumbled
• 150g cream cheese
• 100g self raising flour
• 1 tea bag
• 75g mixed dried fruit (sultanas, currants and candid peel)
• 150ml double cream

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 170 °C/150OC (fan)
2. Grease and line a loose bottomed 22 cm (8½ inch) spring form cake tin.
3. Make a black cup fo tea - but you only want about 100ml of water to make the tea with
4. Pour into a bowl and add the dried fruit and leave to saok (you coudl do this overnight if you have time but I had 15 minutes!)
5. Cream the butter and 50g of the caster sugar until light and fluffy
6. Add 1 of the eggs and beat again
7. Add 1 tsp of the mixed spice and 50g of four and fold in
8. Pour into your tin and spread over the base
9. Separate the 4 remaining eggs.
10. Whisk the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until thick and creamy.
11. Add the caerphilly and cream cheese and mix in well.
12. Fold in the remaining flour, the mixed spice and the soaked fruit and the double cream.
13. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and then fold into the mixture.
14. Pour into the tin and smooth over
15. Bake for 1¼ hours until firmish - it can have a slight wobble, and the top needs to be spongy, like a cake, to the touch.
16. The turn the oven off and leave for at least 1 hour with the door ajar.
17. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and leave to cool completely. Once cooled place in the fridge for a few hours - I left mine overnight ideally before removing from the tin.

3.2.2802

This was really delicious, light and creamy and not too rich or sickly as some cheesecakes can be. You could not really taste the black tea, but the mixed spice came through nicely and the mixed fruit added some texture. As you can see from the above photo, the Caerphilly cheese did not melt completely so it was nice to get a little lump of it mixed in with the rest of the cheesecake slice. I urge you to make it – mmmmm and it went down very well with the parents at the playgroup!

Do you have fond memories of a visit to Wales?

Please pop along to the Visit Wales site where you can enter a free prize draw to win a fabulous foodie break.

This post was written in collaboration with Visit Wales. I was compensated for my ingredients.

Linking up to Lavendar and Lovage’s Cooking With Herbs Linky

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