No-bake Mango Cheesecake

Recently we were invited to a Japanese friend's home for a lovely lunch, and we enjoyed delicious food prepared by her husband who is well capable of making scrumptious food (photos after the recipe below). Our sons are around the same age, and they had so much fun playing with each other. I'd practically begged my friend to let me bring dessert, as it has seem so long since I last made a special treat. Since it's been rather uncomfortably warm in Hong Kong, I wanted to make a chilled treat, and it didn't take me long to decide to make a No-Bake Mango Cheesecake based on the tried-and-tested recipe I posted up a few years ago. I used a can of organic mango slices in natural mango juice, and used the remaining mango juice to make a glaze-topping that had worked beautifully the last time we made a no-bake cheesecake. I'm glad to say that the mango-flavoured cheesecake was a success, and hubby declared that it may even be better than the original strawberry version! I'm only happy that the cheesecake didn't collapse when I released the spring on the springform tin!

Just a tip: you may want to use an electric or manual beater to whip the cream, unless you would like to get some serious arm exercise done (I whipped the cream with a whisk and had dearly wished I had waited until hubby was home before I began making the cheesecake so that he could lend a hand too - excuse the pun).

No-bake Mango Cheesecake

Base

Ingredients
200g digestive biscuits*, crumbed
80g butter, melted
2 teaspoons hot water

Method
Mix all ingredients well. Press into base of springform tin. Chill
in refrigerator.

*The original recipe from my mother-in-law called for Granita Biscuits. By experience I've found Carr's Whole Wheat Crackers are also good. Graham crackers would also make a fine pie crust. Basically a crumbly-textured biscuit would do if you can't find any of these products.

Cheesecake filling

Ingredients
1 tablespoon gelatine
1/4 cup hot water
340g Philedelphia Cream Cheese, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup (90g) sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
400g can of mango, drained and mashed (reserve the juice)
1/4 cup juice/syrup from the can of mangoes
200mL whipping Cream

Method
1. Dissolve the gelatine in hot water.
2. Beat the softened cream cheese until smooth.
3. Gradually add the sugar, dissolved gelatine, vanilla essence, lemon juice and the 1/4 cup of reserved juice. Blend well.
4. Beat cream until just stiff.
5. Fold in cream and drained fruit into cheese mixture.
6. Pour onto prepared crumb crust. Chill until firm.

Glaze topping
There should be about 1/2 cup leftover juice from the can. Dissolve 1/2 tablespoon gelatine in 1/4 cup of hot water, and add the leftover juice to the gelatine solution. Be sure that the cheesecake filling has been chilled for at least 4 hours BEFORE pouring the glaze on top. Otherwise you will find (as I'd learnt in a disastrous lesson a few years ago) that the glaze topping will just sink and destroy the aesthetics of the cheesecake.

A rather skinny slice for the toddler:

Home-cooked lunch

Before we indulged in the cheesecake, we ate an Italian-style lunch prepared by my friend's talented hubby. I'm sure he'd be a chef if he didn't have to work a full-time job! Quite a lovely lunch spread for 4 adults and 2 kids.

An open sandwich with roast beef à la bruschetta - simply delicious:

Yummy pasta, done perfectly al dente:

Tasty salad with prawns, asparagus and arugula - the only thing my friend said she helped make: