Recipe: Kingston Cheesecake

If you spent your childhood in Australia, you will recall the excitement of the opening of a packet of Arnotts Assorted Creams. Everyone had their favourite, I was (and still am) very fond of a shortbread cream but my first pick was always a kingston.

A few years ago someone introduced me to the idea of a super kingston - formed by sandwiching two Anzac biscuits together with Nutella. It is pretty darn delicious and as I made a batch of Anzac biscuits this week I remembered it and it inspired me to create this cheesecake.

This isn't so much an invention as a combination of existing recipes. The base is a standard Anzac biscuit which I got from a Woman's Weekly cookbook and the Nutella cheesecake is a Valli Little recipe from the April Delicious Magazine. However I will take credit for combining them into one decedent dessert.

A couple of tips. To make getting your cheesecake out of the pan and off the baking paper easier, I put the base of the tin in upside down and rather than cutting the paper to size, do a square of paper (so the the edges stick out of the tin). You will need someone to give you a hand as you have to lift the base up a bit to get it to lock into place but it forms a flat base rather than the little dip.

When you take it out of the tin, you can then use the corners of the baking paper to lift the cake onto your serving plate, then you just roll the paper up underneath the cake and it comes out smoothly as shown in the picture. Hopefully that makes sense, let me know in the comments if it doesn't.

Finally, I got a great tip from the cream cheese packet that I've included in the recipe below which is to have a bowl of hot water in the base of the oven as you cook. It stops the crust from burning by keeping the oven a bit more moist.

Kingston Cheesecake

Base
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup plain flour
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
125g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Filling
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbs plain flour
500g cream cheese (at room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
300ml thickened cream
200g Nutella


Preheat oven to 140oC. Grease a 23cm springform tin and line with baking paper.

Combine oats, flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl.

Combine butter, golden syrup and water in a small saucepan, stir over a low heat until smooth, stir in bicarb soda.  Mix into the dry ingredients.

Press the mix evenly into the base of the tin and up the sides leaving about a 1cm gap to the top of the tin (it will puff up to the top of the tin as it bakes). Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Using an electric mixer, beat sugar, flour and cream cheese for 3-4 minutes until smooth. Add the vanilla, eggs and cream and beat for 1-2 minutes or until combined. Add the Nutella and beat for 2-3 minutes until smooth.

Pour the mix into the tin, it should fill to near the top of the biscuit mix.

Place into the center of the oven and put a bowl of hot water on the bottom of the oven. Bake for 1 hour or until almost set in the centre. Turn off the oven and leave with the door slightly ajar for 2 hours or until cooled completely.

Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or preferably overnight.

Swimming

My childhood summers would make an awesome montage in a film.  A gang of tanned kids playing in gardens, building forts in the paddocks behind the houses and climbing trees.  Our combined families playing street cricket and having BBQs that went from lunch till well after dark.  And then there would be the swimming.

We were lucky enough to grow up with a backyard swimming pool in a street were there were quite a few.  Mum could always tell which house we were at by the echoing screams, shouts and splashes.  My sister and I would spend so many hours in those pools that we would be darkly tanned by the end of the summer.  We were masters at riding a pool pony, could swim multiple laps underwater and were unbeatable at marco polo.  One summer we even taught our Uncle how to swim.  We truly were water babies.

As I grew older I spent less and less time in the pool.  It just wasn't as fun as it was when we were little.  Our firm childhood friends and pool buddies had grown up, gone in different directions and were no long available to play marco polo for hours.  Since I moved out of home the effort of going over with swimmers etc and my annoyance at extra hair washing and drying, has meant that it has been quite literally years since I had been in that pool.

But then this summer arrived with its blaze of heat suited to only one thing - lazy pool afternoons.  For the last two weeks before family dinner S and I have headed up for a swim.  I can see such a difference between us when it comes to the pool.  My years and years of constant swimming mean I'm completely confident and jump right in even though I haven't been swimming for ages.  S has never been a swimmer and he is much more hesitant about the whole thing. 

But we have been having a ball.  Mucking about, playing in the water.  I had forgotten how free you feel in the weightless environment of the water.  I am enjoying swimming laps and feeling that sense of powering through.  And it is just so nice to cool off in this super hot weather.

After hiding away in a drawer for years my bikini is finally seeing the light of day and if this weather continues the way it appears to be I can see many more afternoons in the family pool.  Now just to get a new pool pony!

Have you been swimming this summer? And are there any childhood activities that you haven't done since then that you would like to again?

Choc-bit Cookies

There are some foods which are so intrinsically linked to a memory, that it doesn't matter how many times you have them out of that context, one taste and you are instantly sent back there.

Choc-bit cookies are one of those for me.  To start with they aren't cookies, they are little cupcakes, but that is what they have always, and will always be called in my family.  The recipe comes from my Dad's family but it was what Mum did with them that locks them in my memory.  Mum used to make massive batches of them and would freeze them, three to a freezer bag.  Then they would go in our lunch boxes.  By morning tea they were defrosted and I had them pretty much every morning tea for most of my high school years and a good proportion of primary school too.

You might think after so many years of having them every day we would get bored of them, but I don't remember that ever happening.  I even developed a little ritual about how to eat them, where I would nibble them away, counting each choc-bit I found.  It was such a standard part of each morning tea that I would have to report to my friends on how many there were.

Today I made a batch.  While S liked them, without all that history, they are just a nice cupcake to him.  I however was savouring a memory, and yes, I had to nibble away and count the choc-bits!

In case I've inspired you to try them, here is the recipe:

8oz (250g) butter
8oz (250g) sugar
6 eggs (or 4 yolks 3 eggs)
6oz plain flour
6oz SR flour
6 tbls milk
grated lemon rind
1 pkt dark choc bits

Cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the eggs one at a time (I like to add a slurp of vanilla extract at this point too).  Beat in the flour, milk and lemon rind until well combined, then fold in the choc bits.

Spoon mixture into small cupcake cases until 2/3rds full and bake at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes or until golden on top.  This makes a massive batch, I made a half batch yesterday and that was about 20 cupcakes.

They are delicious eaten warm from the oven and also freeze very well.