My dad loves a good cheesecake. He's tried a lot of cheesecakes in his time. As thanks for helping me pick mulberries I promised him a mulberry cheesecake. I've made one cheesecake in my short baking career. This recipe is adapted from one I already had. I tweaked it a little. Just a little.
1 and 1/4 cup of shredded wheatmeal/granita biscuit crumbs
75g butter, melted
75g butter, melted
500g block Philadelphia cream cheese, softened
375g can condensed milk
juice of 1 lemon
1 (generous) tbs gelatine
270g fresh mulberries, stalks cut off
extra mulberries for garnish
Grease and line a 20cm round spring-form pan. Combine butter and biscuit crumbs. Press into base of prepared pan and chill in the fridge.
Beat cream cheese until smooth (see note). Add condensed milk and lemon juice and beat until smooth. Dissolve gelatine in 1/4 cup of freshly boiled water. Fold the mulberries and gelatine mix through the cream cheese mixture. Pour into prepared base and chill for 3 hours or until set.
To serve, sprinkle with extra mulberries and drizzle with mulberry coulis (see note).
Note: Beating the cream cheese can be quite tough at first but perservere! It will soften!
To make mulberry coulis just put fresh mulberries, lemon juice and sugar in a pot. Simmer until it it reaches a chunky sauce consistency or to your liking.
In the middle of Bayswater industrial area, surrounded by panel beaters and car wreckers, is a mulberry tree. This forgotten tree produces the biggest, juiciest, sweetest mulberries I have ever eaten. So every year, around October, I drag my Dad down to the tree to pick mulberries.
There is something I love about this mulberry tree. It presses against a rusty barbed-wire fence. Old tyres and car parts, a broken solar heater and other random pieces of rubbish littered round its trunk. A white ceramic dog keeps watch underneath the canopy. A string of fake pearls sits regally around its neck. An old Mercedes van gets lost beneath cobwebs and rust. Each year I return I feel like I'm visiting an old friend. Just popping in to say hi, you know, see how its going. And each year it brings more fruit than the last. 
Even though my clothes and shoes and hands turn purple...and despite sometimes fighting with the odd snail...and getting covered in dust and cobwebs from clambering over old wheelbarrows and bits of wood to get to the best berries...I will still come back next year.
We got a big haul this year. And for his help I promised my Dad a Mulberry Cheesecake. So stay tuned because a Mulberry Cheescake recipe aint far away!