Raspberry, lemon and vanilla no-bake cheesecake

If you’re looking for the perfect fuss-free dinner party dessert, this is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. It’s incredibly easy to make, and tastes as good as it looks!

Ingredients

Cheesecake filling

• 600g fresh raspberries (frozen are fine too, but note that the colour of the raspberries may “bleed” into the cream cheese filling)
• 500g of cream cheese (I find the full fat cream cheese works best, but feel free to substitute with fat free or lactose free cream cheese)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (not to be confused with vanilla essence)
• 1 lemon, rind only chopped fine
• 4 x tablespoons of icing sugar (feel free to substitute with your sweetener of choice)

Base

• 100g pretzels
• 100g raw almonds
• 100g dried bananas
• 100g digestive biscuits
• 100g melted butter

Method

In a blender, combine the pretzels, raw almonds, dried bananas and digestive biscuits. Blitz the mixture in the blender until it resembles wet sand. Pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl, add melted butter and combine.

Spoon the mixture into a tart tin (mine is a spring-form tin, 11 inches in diameter) and press the mixture firmly into the tin form. Take care that the mixture is spread as evenly as possible throughout. Once the base mixture is in the tin, place the base in the refrigerator to begin setting.

Now for the filling. Combine the cream cheese and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl. Add icing sugar and half of the lemon rind into the cream cheese mixture. Pour in a handful of raspberries and combine.

Remove the cheesecake base from the refrigerator. Gently pour the cream cheese filling mixture into the cheesecake base taking care to make sure the raspberries are evenly distributed throughout.

Arrange the rest of the raspberries on the top of the cheesecake filling, and then sprinkle the remaining lemon rind on the top.

Refrigerate the cheesecake for at least 6 hours to set.

Other variations…

If you’ve got some lemon curd or raspberry jam / conserve sitting in your fridge, add either (or both!) to the cheesecake filling in place of the icing sugar. If you choose to use raspberry jam, I find adding a tablespoon or two of hot water to the jam first makes it easier to mix into the filling.