Christmas cheesecake not setting !

[Jonboy_t]

I’ve made a cheesecake for family meal on the big day, but it’s not set . It's a no bake jobbie, has been in the fridge for about 24 hours and is perhaps marginally more set than it was yesterday, but nowhere near fully set.

Am thinking of freezing it for a few hours to try and set it, but any other tips to help? Not sure if cooking would do it any good or just screw it up?

The cheesecake part is 900g cream cheese, 350ml double cream, 180g icing sugar and a little bit of vanilla and salted caramel pieces. Basically a recipe of the bbc food site.

[21TonyK]

Sounds like a lot of double cream. Very gently combined it may have set but if you whipped it in a machine its probably knackered and either way would always be very soft.

Link to the recipe? It will be salvageable.

Just checked my spec book and it says 2000 cheese to 230 cream about about 12%

Edited by 21TonyK on Sunday 22 December 13:26

[Jonboy_t]

This is the recipe, although I did adapts it slightly to make more as there’s going to be 15 people there. There’s also a layer of caramel between the cheese and biscuit. I did beat it all with an electric whisk

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vanilla-cheese...

Edited by Jonboy_t on Sunday 22 December 15:37

[21TonyK]

I'd get down to the shops and pick up 3 tubs of full fat philadelphia, a tin of condensed milk and some hazlenuts.

Cream the philly, scrape off the existing cake top and throw away half add the remaining top a little at a time to the philly until you have a smooth mix. Get this back on the base and chill for 3-4 hours.

Toast a crush the hazlenuts to go on the top and follow the instructions on the condensed milk to make a caramel sauce... you need brown sugar and butter... oh and when you make the sauce, don;t leave it alone and don;t get it on your skin!

Let the sauce cool before you use it

[Jonboy_t]

Good man, thank you very much

[Planet Claire]

My cheat's cheesecake basically follows this Philadelphia recipe, and instead of of using cream the recipe I had used a sachet of Dream Topping (can you still buy that?) made up as per instructions. You can make it with any flavour jelly then decorate the top with appropriate fruit. I used to do an orange jelly and put tinned mandarin oranges on the top cos I love tinned mandarins!; raspberries and strawberries are good too.

Rather than making the jelly with boilling water I used to put the jelly cubes into a Pyrex jug and melt them in the microwave, then add cold/tepid water afterwards - that way it doesn't take too long to set. Stir the mixture regularly so that you don't end up with big lumps of jelly.

If you want to do caramel you don't need to buy condensed milk as they actually do tins of caramel now - saving you the hour of boiling it up!

[Semmelweiss]

The trick is Full-Fat cream cheese. The low fat/no fat doesn't set very well unless you use a gelling agent

[nikaiyo2]

Not much help for now, but imho the best cheesecake recipe is Nigellas Baked... it’s dead easy.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/london-cheesecake

[Mobile Chicane]

You need gelatine in a 'no bake' cheesecake. It won't set otherwise, irrespective of the fat content of your cream cheese.

/ Pastry Chef.

[Neptune188]

Jonboy_t said:

This is the recipe, although I did adapts it slightly to make more as there’s going to be 15 people there. There’s also a layer of caramel between the cheese and biscuit. I did beat it all with an electric whisk

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vanilla-cheese...

Edited by Jonboy_t on Sunday 22 December 15:37

21TonyK's solution will fix it.

I think your scaling may have undone things. Assuming you wanted 1.5 times the mix for 18 portions:

900g cream cheese
150g Icing Sugar
420ml double cream.

[Jonboy_t]

I decided to call it custard cake instead, couldn’t be arsed with it in the end so made a big spotted dick for everyone and they can pour caramel cheesecake over it if they want!

Happy Christmas everyone