Black-and-white-and-red-all-over cheesecake

Q: what's black and white and red all over?

A: a sunburned penguin!!!

When was the last time you had a good laugh? These days, in a world where we are all grown up and so serious about study or making money or bringing up the family, there's not much opportunity for guffawing and sniggering. Alright, to be honest, I have a giggle each week when 30 Rock is on television - there's something endearing and admirable about Liz Lemon's determination and Jack Donaghy's bizarre business pronouncements: "He built GE into the greatest company on Earth, and the Earth into one of the top three planets in the universe!"

So where does this cheesecake come into it? Well, I had a pretty good laugh - or it could be construed as a sob of despair - after I took this cheesecake out of the oven. It was advertised as a 'black and white cheesecake', but the black is not quite black, and the white is more of an off-white with a hint of clotted cream. Dulux's paint chart would probably have a closer match. So I covered it with a red raspberry puree. At least it's RED. Sort of.

Black and White (and Red) Cheesecake

serves 8

Ingredients

300g Oreo cookies

50g butter, melted

500g cream cheese, softened

2 tblsp plain flour

100g caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

150ml sour cream

180g white chocolate, melted and cooled

100g frozen or fresh raspberries

50g caster sugar

Method

1.  Heat oven to 180C (fan-forced 160C).

2.  Pull apart the biscuits and scrape out the filling (discard or eat the filling later). Crush the biscuits in a food processor into fine crumbs, then add the melted butter. Mix until combined then press into the base of a 20cm springform tin. Bake for 5 minutes, then cool.

3.  Beat the cream cheeese with the flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs and sour cream until light and fluffy.  Stir in the white chocolate and pour into the tin.

4. Bake for 40 minutes and check - it should be set, but wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool completely.

5.  For the raspberry puree: Crush the raspberries in a food processor until almost liquified, then push through a sieve to remove the seeds.  Put the puree and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Simmer gently for 5 minutes until it thickens slightly.  Cool, then spread over the cheesecake.

recipe adapted from Olive (January 2011)

I like Oreo biscuits because they are quite light in texture.

Other ingredients include eggs, white chocolate and cream cheese.

You have to scrape the filling from the Oreos before crushing them to dirt.

Only problem is, what do you do with the sweet innards? I eventually had to turf most of this because it was too sweet to eat and some ants were making their way across the benchtop to the bowl.

Crushed frozen raspberries. These were crushed while still frozen although you should probably leave them defrost first. Looks like raspberry sherbert...

So the inside of the cheesecake is whiteish, but not as white as, say, Dulux Vivid White (paint colour)

The so-called white can also be compared to Porter's Paints' Lamb's Wool

How does it taste? This is quite a rich, dense cheesecake due to the white chocolate in the filling. The Oreo base was the best part, in my opinion. Next time, I will stick to my trusted Vogue Entertaining recipe.