Grapefruit and basil Cheese cake

Grapefruit and basil cheese cake 

Too carry on with my citrus fruit theme for February I decided to make an English cheese cake with grapefruit and basil, now you may not realise that basil goes with sweet things but I hear to tell you to trust me, it does. 

Also to try and keep a bit of healthiness into my most indulgent of dishes I made the base from bran flakes and muesli. 

Does it take the calories out you maybe thinking! Sorry the answer is no, not really but it does add a few extra nutrients and if you read my stuff you’ll realise that’s my main aim in my cooking, trying to add extra nutrients because I simply cant forgo the odd indulgent piece of sweet goodness, but I try to make it a little bit better.  

For the base

I’ve not been able to find very nice biscuits for bases for a while so I’ve taken to making my own base. It’s actually on par with the easiness of crushing up biscuits. 

  Butter 50g

  ½ table spoon of honey 

  Bran flakes 150g

  Muesli 150g 

Vanilla 1 pod or half if you paid loads for it like in Europe

Method for the base

In a food processer, process the bran flakes into a fine crumb, put them into a mixing bowl with the muesli, leave this as it comes, Melt the butter and then Mix it into all the ingredients together in a mixer. put in the bottom of a normal sized cake tin and put aside in the fridge until you have made the filling 

Ingredients For the filling

  400g/ 1 cup cream cheese

  400ml whipped cream

  100g/ 1/2 cup sugar

  1 grapefruit juice and zest 

  1 lemon juice 

  ½ bunch of basil, finely chopped 

  7 gelatine leaves 

Method for the filling

Step 1

 whip the cream in a mixing bowl, then immediately move to another bowl and refrigerate,  

step 2

whisk the sugar into the cream cheese, and add the lemon juice.

Step 3

In a pan dissolve the gelatine in the grapefruit juice stirring whilst it heats to ensure it dissolves evenly. Pour into the cream cheese sugar mix and then set aside for it too cool for a few minutes, not too long though you don’t want it to set yet just thicken

Step 4 

Fold in the whipped cream with a metal spoon gently and slowly so you don't bosh the air out, when it is a smooth consistency fold in your basil

Step 5 

Pour over base and then refrigerate for at least 2 hours, Normally if I was serving this in the evening I would prepare it in the morning giving it a good half day to set.

I decorated mine with loads of fruit and served with a fruit salad on the side, Happy bright colourful dessert