Baked Blueberry Cheesecake - Sugar & Gluten Free

I still eat traditional desserts every now and again.  I am not a purist nor am I an evangelist, nor am I thinking up anything new.I steer clear of eating chemicals and I won't eat fake food, but if I'm at a restaurant and they have a wicked looking dessert on the menu then I will say yes (about once a month).  Real butter, real eggs, real dairy, real sugar.

             One of my favourite desserts has always been baked cheesecake and there is a bakery on Acland St St Kilda who make a Polish Baked Cheesecake that takes my breath away.  It's an experience when I eat this Polish Cheesecake.  I purchase with my two girls and we take our traditional dessert to the local community veggie garden and eat amongst the calandula flowers.When it comes to making clean versions of my old school favourites though, I am absolutely going to give it a shot and having made a heap of whey and cream cheese this week I had all the fixins' of a cheesecake.  The recipes for whey and cream cheese are in our eBook 'Love Your Guts', which you can download for FREE here.Maybe you can't or never have sugar, don't eat gluten, are intolerant or have cealiac disease.  Perhaps you simply want to make a real-food recipe that is a little more pure of taste.Whatever the reason, this cheesecake is a beautiful recipe because there is nothing about it that tastes 'concession'.  It is simply a delicious cake that is simple to make, gorgeous to look at and is gluten, sugar and nasty free.I would love to hear how yours goes in the comments below.

---

 

Baked Blueberry Cheesecake

Base

• 2 cups of almond meal
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup light flavoured olive oil

Cheese filling

• 360 grams of cream cheese - softened at room temperature (we make our own from biodynamic full fat yoghurt - you can buy from the supermarket if you would like to)
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 3 eggs lightly beaten
• juice and rind from one lemon
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1 tsp coconut oil for greasing the tin

Rice or dried beans or baking weights to dry-bake the pastry + some baking paperMethod

1. Heat oven to 150C (300F)
2. In a mixing bowl, add all base ingredients and mix until it all comes together.
3. Using your hands, use your coconut oil to grease your tin.  I used a 10 inch flan tin, though you can use a 20cm springform pan if you prefer.  I recommend only using pie/flan or springform pans as it will be very hard to get your cheesecake out of a cake tin.
4. Using your hands, press your 'pastry' into the tin and by pressing with the tips of your fingers and heel of your palm, spread the pastry to about 2mm thickness around the whole tin and up the sides.  Try not to get it too thick in the corners.
5. Getting a piece of baking paper bigger than your cheesecake, scrunch it up so it's able to bend easily and place over the bottom of your pastry.  Fill with dried rice or beans or baking weights and bake your base for 10 minutes on it's own.
6. Remove from oven and remove baking weight.
7. In a food processor or with electric beaters, beat the cream cheese until soft, add the vanilla and lemon juice and rind and then slowly add the eggs, beating quickly.  Add the maple syrup.
8. Pour into the par-baked pastry shell and drop blueberries into the top.
9. Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes for a flat pie or one hour for a cake sized springform pan.
10. Allow to cool slightly in the oven with the door open when baked so it doesn't crack the top when it hits cooler air.
11. When cool, remove from tin and place extra blueberries on top.
12. Serve with fresh cream or coconut cream.
13. YUM!