Kitchen Experiments: Chocolate-Mango Cheesecake

Can you make cheesecake with paneer?

If the question shocks you - well, pick up your jaw from where it has hit the floor - for yes, you can make cheesecake from paneer, and yes, it is mighty yummy too. :)

With the summer heat skittering from the high-30's to the Unbearables, milk tends to curdle very easily. As a result we were landed with 2 lots of paneer from 2 casualties with the daily milk.

Now before you imagine luscious mounds of malai paneer,let me tell you that what I had on hand was the crumbly, almost mealy version, which is difficult to transform into a delish Kadhai Paneer or even a halfway decent Paneer Bhurji.

Given that I'd already been toying with trying something new in the baking department and having bought the eggs necessary for that, it didn't take too long to figure that cheesecake it would be in today's kitchen laboratory. I was going to try a new spin on the traditional chocolate cheesecake (it had been a year since I last baked one), when my foodie bff VS suggested (on GTalk) that I should try my hand at mango cheesecake instead, given the summer abundance of mangoes (Yummmmmm...)

Enthused by the suggestion, I was all set to make 2 cheesecakes - chocolate (because I luuuurve chocolate) and mango. I gathered all the ingredients (eggs, paneer, sour cream, sugar, cocoa, chocolate chips, fresh mango pieces, biscuits (Marie and Good Day - I didn't have the stipulated Digestive biscuits), butter and milk) when I realised that my ill-equipped-for-baking kitchen currently had only one baking pan of the required size.

Considering I was using accidental paneer as a substitute for Philadelphia cream cheese, I shrugged and decided to have a 2-layered chocolate-mango cheesecake instead. Easier for baking (my oven is large enough for only one pan at a time) and the washing up too :D

Now baking is one area where the rules are meant to obeyed. Even Nigella, the Goddess of no-fuss casual cooking recommends using precise measurements when it comes to baking. The last time I'd made cheesecake, I HAD played by the rules. This time around, though, I just couldn't be bothered. Maybe it was the intense summer heat which made me lazy... :P

Its come-clean time - I used no measurements at all. Gulp. There - I have said it. Everything was mixed and poured strictly by eye. But yes, I knew that I was setting myself up very likely for a culinary disaster and that it would take some serious good luck for this slapdash experiment to work. My smidgen of faith was held by the fact that with 2 whole eggs and a yolk in the mix, there was not much that wouldn't set as it baked. :D

Since all's well that ends well, (The final result of my experiment was a chocolatey creamy cheesecake with a surprise mango tang - the choco-mango combination works!) I can share with you the process (I cant call it a recipe - no quantities , you see!) I used to make this doubly delicious Chocolate Mango Cheesecake. You can get the quantities by superimposing this process on any standard cheesecake recipe.

Method:
1. The biscuit base:

• Set some (approx 3 teaspoons) butter to melt, on the stove
• While it melts, whiz the biscuits (I used 3 Marie and 3 Good Day biscuits), sugar and cocoa in the mixer
• Pour the biscuit crumbs and melted butter in the baking pan, mix well and spread it out to cover the base using the pads of your fingers
• Chill in the fridge till the cheesecake batter is ready
  

2. The batter:

• Set the chocolate chips to melt in a double boiler
  
  
  
• In the mixer/food processor, break open 2 eggs. Add the yolk of a third egg. Then toss in sugar, paneer, sour cream (I used 3 teaspoons of 'virajleli saay' (akin to curd/yogurt made entirely of cream instead of milk) ) and some milk (for adjusting the consistency - I ended up using a tad more than necessary).
  
  
  
• Whiz away till smooth, DO NOT OVERMIX. For a luscious cheesecake its essential that not too much air gets beaten into the batter as you mix it. (Its another thing that I was forced to give it one quick whiz and stop, since the lid being loose, the batter started leaking out as I whizzed it. :D )
  

3. Assembly:

• Divide the batter into two halves. Add mango pulp to one and the melted chocolate to another
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Take out the now-chilled-and-slightly-set biscuit base from the fridge. Pour in the mango batter first, followed by the chocolate, so that you get alternate layers of chocolate-mango-chocolate - the base has cocoa in it, remember?
  
  
  
  Be very careful when you pour the chocolate batter- you don't want it to splosh right into the bottom and mix with the mango batter - you'll ruin the layered effect then. Best ladle out the chocolate batter carefully over the mango one. (Though if the two do mix a bit (or a lot) - don't be disheartened - it'll look prettily marbled instead of layered and you can call it Chocolate-Mango Ripple Cheesecake. :) The taste will be just as good, so no worries.)
  
  
  
• Take a saucepan and fill it with hot water. Set the baking tin in this pan and bake in a preheated oven till the cheesecake is just-set - it should have a nervous wobble in the centre but the toothpick/skewer inserted in the edge should come out clean.
  
  
  (Dont ask me oven temperatures and timings - my beast of an oven has neither a timer nor temperature controls)
  
  
  My Old Faithful!
  
  
• Let it cool ASAP under the fan - you want to bring down the temperature immediately to avoid over-cooking the cheesecake.

Once cool, cut into slices (use a hot knife for neat slices) and serve (with whipped cream, if so desired)



Confession time:

I had clean forgotten about baking the cheesecake in a water bath. I tossed together all the ingredients and slid the pan into the oven, feeling slightly smug about how incredibly easy I had made the whole damn recipe - and it was a good ten minutes before I remembered the elaborate double-foil+cling film mechanism Nigella uses to bake her cheesecake. Mortified at my over-confident mistake I hastily made repairs and voila - no damage done. :)


Moral of the story:

You CAN get by with shortcuts and time-saving innovations if you have had some degree of practice in the kitchen. But always be on the lookout for overconfidence, for all it takes to take the air out of THAT is a deflated cake or cheesecake or souffle. Play by the rules as much as you can - but be prepared to face disastrous consequences with a smile if you've broken them - for innovations do flop (literally and figuratively!) - at times. :)