Easy lemon cheesecakes

I don’t often make dessert, but when I do, oooh I do it right.

I haven’t made very many cheesecakes, so in the past I’m not sure I’ve ever realised quite how easy they are. Of course, you can do the whole baked cheesecake thing, which requires a little more thought, but if you’re doing a no-bake version like these little easy lemon cheesecakes, you can pretty much make them in your sleep.

(though I wouldn’t recommend it, obviously, otherwise you’d be waking up every morning to a big batch of cheesecakes, which would be lovely, but a little impractical)

The cheesecake base is only three ingredients – some crushed digestive biscuits, some melted butter, and a touch of honey for sweetness. The cheesecake mixture is also only three ingredients (told you they were easy) – cream cheese, lemon juice, and sugar.

Since these lemon cheesecakes are oh-so easy, I glammed mine up a bit with some fresh raspberries (which always look stunning, despite the annoyance of getting pips stuck in your teeth), and a really simple lemon glaze.

It’s only made with one ingredient: lemonade!

I actually used a really lovely Sicilian lemon drink from Galvanina, which is soooo good. It’s nice and tart, not sickly sweet like some lemonades are – and when you’re drizzling the glaze over a super sweet cheesecake, the touch of tartness is absolutely perfect.

Galvanina also have a few other fizzy soft drink flavours available – Sicilian ruby orange, red grapefruit, and Sicilian clementine. They’re all absolutely lovely, though the clementine one is probably my favourite. I’ve never had a clementine drink before (in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything other than the standard ‘orange’, which often seems to refer to the colour as much as the flavour!), so it makes a lovely change from the norm. The red grapefruit flavour has the tangy tartness you’d expect from anything grapefruit flavoured, and the orange and clementine drinks are the perfect balance of tart and sweet. Really refreshing for this warm weather we’ve been having here this week!

And as a somewhat irrelevant side note, these drinks come in the most gorgeous bottles! You can only just see it in these pictures, but rather than being plastered with a big paper label, the glass is moulded with a beautiful design. Definitely going to keep the bottles afterwards, maybe for flowers, or for something like this!

To make the lemon glaze, I just reduced the lemon drink down until it was quite thick and syrupy, then drizzled it over the cheesecakes, and left it to set. It ended up nice and sticky!

Do you think you might try Galvanina’s drinks this summer?

Print

Easy lemon cheescakes

Prep Time: 30 mins

Total Time: 30 mins

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 75 g Digestive biscuits ~5 biscuits
• 1 tbsp honey
• 400 g cream cheese ~1 1/2 cups
• 75 g caster sugar ~1/4 cup
• Juice of 1-2 lemons
• 200 ml Sicilian lemon Galvanina ~3/4 cup

Instructions

• Melt the butter in a small pan or in the microwave. Crush the digestive biscuits, and add them to the melted butter along with the honey. Mix well. Press the mixture into four small round moulds or small ramekins. Place in the fridge while you prepare the cheesecake mixture.
• Add the cream cheese, caster sugar and the juice of one lemon to a large bowl, and mix until smooth. Add more lemon juice to taste (some lemons are juicier than others, so you may not need any additional lemon juice).
• Divide the cheesecake mixture over the four biscuit bases, and return to the fridge for at least two hours to set.
• Add the Galvanina to a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. Boil for around 15 minutes, until reduced to about a quarter of the volume. Spoon the syrup over the tops of the cheesecakes, and return to the fridge once more until the glaze has set and you are ready to serve.

Author: Becca Heyes

Love quick and easy desserts? You might like my blueberry shortbread bars – there’s only 4 ingredients!