Brilliant Baked Orange & Cardamom Cheesecake Recipe

Ingredients

24 digestive biscuits
100g dark chocolate
125g butter
6 cardamom pods
1 orange, zest and juice
4 eggs
150g sugar
500g ricotta
250g mascarpone
2 tbsp plain flour
50g dried cranberries

Prep: 20 mins + chilling | Cook: 60 mins

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Method

1. Heat your oven to 180°C/Fan 160°C/Gas 4. Lightly grease a 23cm-wide, loose-bottomed cake tin with olive or sunflower oil. Pop 24 digestive biscuits in a freezer or sandwich bag. Seal it. Bash them with a rolling pin to make crumbs. Alternatively, you can blitz them in a food processor to make crumbs.

2. Roughly chop half the chocolate and set to one side. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat. Stir the biscuit crumbs into the melted butter. When they're well mixed, stir in the chopped chocolate. Spoon into the cake tin. Press down and smooth with the back of a spoon. Slide into the oven and bake for 10 mins.

3. Meanwhile, pop the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar and crack them open. Discard the papery skins, leaving the black seeds in the mortar. Grind the seeds to a fine powder. Finely grate or pare the zest from the orange (keep the orange for later).

4. Crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add most of the sugar, putting 1 tbsp to one side. Whisk together with electric beaters for 2-3 mins till the eggs are pale and thick. Add the cardamom, orange zest, ricotta, mascarpone and flour. Whisk together till smooth (don't overbeat).

5. Spoon the cheese mixture into the baking tin. Turn the oven down to 160°C/Fan 140°C/Gas 3 (low and slow is the rule for cheesecakes). Bake for around 55 mins till the cheesecake is just set with a slight wobble in the middle. Cool in the tin (see our tip on cooking and cooling your cheesecake a day ahead). When the cheesecake is cool, transfer to the fridge (leave it in the tin).

6. When you’re ready to serve the cheesecake, loosen the cake tin. Lift the cheesecake up and out. Pop it on a serving plate. Melt the rest of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.

7. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cheesecake. Tip the dried cranberries in a pan and squeeze in the juice from the zested orange. Add the spoonful of sugar you saved earlier. Warm over a lowish heat till the sugar dissolves. Spoon over the cheesecake and serve.

8. Get Ahead
If you can, bake the cheesecake the night before, but don’t take it out of the oven. Just turn the oven off and let the cheesecake cool in the oven overnight. The slow cooling helps the cheesecake stay in one piece. In the monring, transfer the cheesecake to the fridge.