So I decided to make a cheesecake, of the chilled, non-baked variety. I’ve never made one before, but I saw a great looking cheesecake recipe book while browsing around in Borders the other week. I was tempted to buy it at the time, but decided against. And then a week later we received some Borders book club coupons, one of which was 40% off a cookbook! So it was duly acquired.

The book is split half-half between baked cheesecakes (my favourite type), and non-baked. I thought I’d start by trying a classic non-baked cheesecake, before moving on to some of the more exotic types in the book.

Being my first time, I tried to follow the recipe as closely as I could. After making a reasonably successful biscuit-crumb base, I turned to the filling. The recipe said to start by dissolving a teaspoon of gelatine in a tablespoon of water, by using a heatproof cup in a saucepan of simmering water to heat it gently. That worked fine. The recipe said to set it aside for 5 minutes to cool, while mixing the rest of the filling.

Fine… I got the rest of the filling mixed up. Cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, some orange zest, lime juice. It looked fine and tasted right. Then it was time to add the dissolved gelatine. Only the cup which had the gelatine and water in it now held a solid, rubbery plug of jelly. It was no longer liquid at all! I tried mixing it through the filling mixture, but it was like trying to mix a lump of rubber through it. I had to fish it out and make an entirely new batch of dissolved gelatine. This time I mixed it into the filling before it had a chance to cool down and solidify. Hopefully it will turn out okay and the filling will set properly.