Baked Vanilla Cheesecake

Ingredients

• 250 g digestive biscuits
• 110 g butter, melted
• 700 g full-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
• 200 g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 200 g soured cream
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp cornflour

Method

1. Press the base firmly

   Blitz the biscuits to crumbs, mix with the melted butter, and press hard into a lined 23 cm springform tin with the back of a spoon. Press it properly compact or the base crumbles when you cut it. Bake at 160°C for 10 minutes and cool.

   10 min

2. Room temperature everything

   The cream cheese, eggs and soured cream all need to be at room temperature. Cold cream cheese will not beat smooth, and the lumps never disappear later — they just bake in.

3. Beat low and slow

   Beat the cream cheese, sugar and cornflour on a low speed until smooth, scraping the bowl. Low speed matters: air whipped in now expands in the oven and then collapses into a crater as it cools.

4. Add the wet ingredients

   Beat in the eggs and yolk one at a time on the lowest setting, then the soured cream, vanilla and lemon zest. Stop the moment it is combined.

5. Bake in a water bath

   Wrap the tin base in foil, sit it in a roasting tin, pour in hot water halfway up, and bake at 160°C until the edges are set and the middle still wobbles like a set jelly. The water bath is what prevents the cracked, domed, dry-edged version.

   1 h

6. Cool in stages, then chill

   Turn the oven off and leave it inside with the door ajar for an hour, then cool fully and chill overnight. Cheesecake cracks from sudden temperature changes, and it needs the full night to set properly.

   1 h