Tried and tested cheesecake recipes?!

[LuluHB]

I found a recipe years ago that I use as my base cheesecake, and then modify as I like. I'm not a fan of baked cheesecake so this is chilled.

base is 250g biscuits, ground then mixed with 150g melted butter and pressed into a springform pan. I change the biscuits I'm using to suit the flavour of the cheesecake, but normally I use either granitas, chocolate ripples or ginger snaps.

Filling is:

3 tsp gelatine
1/4 cup water
500g cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
300ml carton thickened cream, whipped

Sprinkle the gelatine over the water in a heatproof jug and stand in simmer water, stirring until the gelatine is dissolved. Let cool.

Beat cream cheese and sugar together until smooth. Stir in the gelatine mixture, then fold in the whipped cream. And that's it!

The original recipe I had said you should cut up a 250g block of peppermint centred chocolate and mix it through and that's really yum.

Other variations I've done are

mixing through the zest of a lemon and its juice. Once the cream cheese mix is poured over the biscuits chill for a bit and then cover the top of the cream mix with lemon curd.

Mix in whole berries, and then do a berry coulis for the top.

mix in crushed maltesers

split the cream cheese mix into two and leave one half plain, but then mix in a couple of tablespoons of coffee dissolved in a bit of hot water into the other. End up with a pretty layered effect.

Mix in crushed peanut brittle, and then swirl caramel topping through the surface.

I've also used muffin pans to do individual cheesecakes too. If you're having a party its really easy to do a big batch of the base, and then add different bits and pieces so you have variations to the toppings.

Can't think of anything else for now, but basically you can use the base to do whatever you can think of.