A very lovely colleague – Natalie – abandoned us on Friday to move back up to her hometown of Derby.  To bid her a fond farewell and satisfy her sweet tooth, I baked Mary Berry’s white chocolate cheesecake, which was absolutely delicious.  As I was catering for lots of people, I increased the recipe by half as much again and baked it in a 25cm springform tin, which worked beautifully.  So the quantities became:

75g unsalted butter
40g dark chocolate
225g Digestive biscuits

450g white chocolate (I used Green & Black’s)
600g full fat cream cheese (I used Philadelphia)
225ml soured cream
3 eggs
1½ tsp vanilla extract

I followed Mary’s instructions; it came out beautifully and was extremely well received.  A little photo-diary, in case it’s of interest:

Melted dark chocolate and butter for the base

The lazy girl’s method for crushing biscuits

The lazy girl’s way of combining biscuits and melted chocolate

Cheesecake base (a soup spoon works beautifully for this, by the way)

Melted white chocolate

Mixed eggs, cream cheese, soured cream and vanilla

White Chocolate Cheesecake (and some token fruit)

Now, I’m rarely enthusiastic about white chocolate and – to be perfectly honest – I’m not exactly a superfan of cheesecake either, but this was rather delicious.  The soured cream balanced out the sweetness of the white chocolate, the texture is light and the chocolate in the base lends a little decadence.  Not that one really needs extra decadence in a dessert that contains 4½ bars of white chocolate…