Former Royal Chef Shares No Bake Cheesecake He Made For The Royal Family

Winston! Come back with that leg of lamb! Who wants to turn on the oven in the summer? Not you, right? Not me either. It's too warm to be cooking inside. Today, I'm going to share with you a no-bake cheesecake recipe. And this is a recipe that I prepared for the Royal Family when they were at Balmoral Castle, up in the 50,000-acre estate up in the Scottish Highlands. At Balmoral Castle, they have an abundance in the gardens of raspberries, strawberries, frederois, blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries, all the soft berries. Scotland is just the perfect climate for growing these beautiful berries. And the Royal Family would actually have those berries most nights just to take out on a picnic, take out to the hills, on a barbecue. But at the same time, we'd have to come up with new ideas and new recipes. Well, to make a cheesecake, vanilla bean cheesecake, and then top it with some gorgeous Balmoral soft berries, it doesn't get much better than that when you're talking about a dessert, a pudding in the summer. Rather than the usual cream cheese in the cheesecake, and then, you know, putting eggs in there and baking it in the oven, I'm actually making mine using cottage cheese. So it's much lighter and much creamier. And if you make this one at home, I know you're going to love it. So I start off with a springform pan. I find this easier because, you know, we can pop it and then the cheesecake just looks absolutely perfect. But I like to line mine with some parchment paper. And to do this, we're going to either sit it on there, draw around it, and cut all the way around that circle, or we'll take a piece of parchment paper, fold it in half, turn it over, fold it in half again, and then in half again, and then in half again. And then we measure into the center to the edge, which is there. Tear that piece, open it up, and we get a beautiful circle that sits neatly in the bottom of the pan. Now, you're probably going to have to rewind and watch that part again, but it's such an easy way of just lining the tin. Once we've done that, now we can start making the base for the cheesecake. And I'm going to start off with some graham crumbs and some brown sugar. And I like to add, just for texture, some very finely chopped pecans and a little lemon zest in there too. Next, I'm going to add some unsalted butter. And just mix all of these things together. Now, this is going to make a nice, sweet, crunchy base that tastes absolutely gorgeous. It really does. I like the base on its own, you know, just a snap, because it sets, the butter sets it firm, and you can just eat it in chunky pieces. So once you've mixed all that together, then we can pour it into the mold. Push it around, but don't press down just yet. Once you've got it lightly even and covered, then what I do is I take one of my cup measures and I compress all the way around and push it down. This is going to help set the butter up nice and firm and nice and even too. It's now going into the refrigerator for about 30 minutes or so. It's only thin, so it won't take long to set up. But if you try and put the cheese mix on the top right away, it'll start lifting it all up and you won't get those beautiful layers. 30 minutes in the fridge. While my base is setting for 30 minutes, I can actually make my cheese, my cottage cheese topping that's going to go on top. And I start off, as I said, with this gorgeous, thick, and creamy cottage cheese. But I don't want those lumps in there, so it's actually going to go into the food processor along with some Greek yogurt. I'm going to blend those until it's nice and soft. Once it's nice and soft and there are no lumps in there, then I can add some sugar and some vanilla paste. I'm going to blitz this together until it's all mixed in. Now, the recipe is in the description below, so you can make this at home. You've got all the ingredients in there. And I'll say that again. The recipe is in the description. Now, I'm only saying that twice because I get so many comments on my feed. People saying, we don't turn on to watch your twaddle, you talking. We want the recipe so we can make the dish. But the recipe is there in the description. Description below. Got it? Actually, talking of thumbs up, give me a thumbs up as well for the recipe. Subscribe if you haven't already. And leave me a comment below. But don't leave me a comment saying, where's the recipe? It's in the description. Okay, give it a blitz. Right, now that's all mixed in, I'm going to take out. Look, see, it's just like cream all over. I'm going to take this mix now and just pour it into my bowl. And then into there, I've got some whipped cream. And I'm going to add the whipped cream into that as well. And just lightly whisk this into the cottage cheese mix. Now, because it's not cream cheese and it's not eggs, it needs something to help make it set. If we pour this directly on top of our base, it won't set up. It'll be a mess. So, what we use is a little gelatin. And I've got some lemon juice and some powdered gelatin that I'm putting in there. And I whisk these together until they're all mixed in. And then I'm going to put it on the heat and just warm it enough so it starts to soften. I just warm the gelatin and the lemon juice until it starts to soften and get nice and runny. What I don't want to do is boil it. If I boil it, then that's going to stop the gelatin from setting my mix. Once it's nice and soft and runny, I can then pour this into my cheesecake mix. Make sure you get all of it in there because everything is nicely measured. And then quickly now mix this gelatin into the mix. And you have to do this quickly because otherwise the gelatin sets. And you get big lumps of gelatin in the mix. And that's not good. We want it all nicely mixed in so there are no chunky pieces of gelatin. And that is our base. That's our vanilla bean cottage cheese cheesecake base. So, now my base is set firm. I'm going to lay this on top. So, spoon into the center of the tin. And then we can flatten it from there. And then just smooth out the top. It's now going into the refrigerator, preferably overnight, but at least for three or four hours so that it sets up nice and firm. The last thing we need is when we spring unload it, it just collapses. Into the fridge. After three or four hours or overnight in the refrigerator, my cheesecake is set up nice and firm. What I like to do first is to get a little knife in hot water and just run it all the way around the edge. Now I can just unclip and carefully lift off. How beautiful is that cheesecake? Once you've carefully lifted it off the base, and be careful, make sure you take off the parchment paper too, then it's ready for decorating with the soft fruit of your choice. And it can be peaches, cooked soft peaches. You can do raspberries and take the raspberries and just lay them all neatly on top. You can take strawberries and slice them and toss them in a little sugar and put them on top. But today I'm doing blueberries. And what I've done is I've heated my blueberries with some water, sugar, a little orange Curacao, and thickened it with a little cornstarch. Again, the recipe is in the description. So how to make this, you've got in the description. And then I'm going to carefully just lay over the top of my cheesecake. The delicious royal recipe at Balmoral Castle for the no-bake cheesecake looks amazing. Look at those fresh berries on the top. Beautiful, soft, creamy center. It's just the perfect cheesecake for summer. Hope you've enjoyed the video. Go and make the cheesecake at home. Send me pictures. Let me know what you think. Try the recipe out. The recipe is in the description. Leave me comments below and give me a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already and share with your friends. See you again soon.