Heart cry…followed by a perfect cheesecake recipe

Prolog: I’m truly sorry for all the bad words I use in this blog. This one is just a heart cry.

So I’m finally doing something I really like. I’ve eventually put my foot down and decided to start my own business (I really hope you’ll be hearing more about it from me soon!). Over the past few weeks I was so busy working on it, that I kind of lost the track of time and space. Still, last few days got me back out of a clear blue sky.

Imagine you live a life with no certainty about your future. Imagine you just lose all the time only because you’d happened to be born in a certain place. Imagine most of the people around you do not even understand how deeply f***ed they all are. Imagine your plans – weekend, holidays, life… all of them simply going to pieces. And you get more and more of this every day.

Well, that’s where I am now. Not only me. Something about 143 million Russian people (well, ok, some of that 143 million being blissfully unaware).

The worst thing is…well, you just have to deal with it. It’s not that I’m some kind of a cry-baby. I’m definitely not, and I’m really working my ass off to change something, at least for me and my family. It’s just that… now it’s too late to change anything.

Let us all be strong to survive this.

PS. Now, off the reel, a perfect cheesecake recipe (I made it with my own homemade cream cheese, but you are more than welcome to use store-bought cream cheese, we just do not have it in our supermarkets anymore). It is super creamy, yet extremely light and fantastically delicious!

For the filling you will need:

• 800 g cream cheese
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• a pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp raspberry jam
• 150 g caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla sugar (or 1-2 drops vanilla essence)

For the crust you will need:

• 3 tbsp sugar
• 85 butter
• 100 g butter biscuits or graham crackers, ground
• 50 g walnuts, ground

1. Preheat your oven to 200ºC. In a large pan melt the butter over medium heat, then add ground biscuits, walnuts and sugar. Fry until slightly browned, take off the heat and let cool for 10-15 min.

2.  Press the biscuit-walnut-butter crumbs into your baking pan and bake for 10 min. Let the crust cool while you’re preparing the filling.

3. In a large bowl beat the cream cheese, caster sugar, salt and flour with a mixer. Then add eggs, one at a time, mix well. Finally, add lemon juice, zest, and vanilla sugar and beat well until creamy.

4. Pour the filling into the pan with cooled crust, bake for 10 min at 200ºC, then reduce the temperature to 160ºC and bake for 30 min more.

5. Turn off the heat and let the cheesecake cool down for 1-2 hours in the oven. Then put it in your refrigerator for 3-4 more hours.

6. When the cheesecake is ready, pour over some raspberry jam and… enjoy!