Chilled Mango Cheesecake

Mango, a well-liked tropical fruit familiar to many.

It’s the mango season here, an aromatic tropical fruit. I love mangoes and their many varieties, the honey Chokanan (Thai’s Chauk-Anan), Elephant tusk (Thai’s Nuen Jan), Water lily, Alphonso (India’s) and the local Apple mangoes. I like it fresh, dried, juiced, in salad, in ice-cream, in sherbet, in pudding and in smoothies too.

It’s so juicy, sweet and the taste depends largely on the species, some with a tinge of sour, some has whitish flesh or pale yellow, yellow or orangy. I can even eat 2 mangoes for lunch on some days.

A search thru’ the internet, found that Mango is rich in a variety of phytochemicals and nutrients that qualify it as a model "superfruit". The fruit is high in prebiotic dietary fiber, vitamin C, polyphenols and provitamin A carotenoids. (Wikipedia).

I found lots of Chokanan Mango in our fresh market yesterday morning and bought 2kg at RM4.90 per kg. There are times when it can get as low as RM3.00 per kg when supply is aplenty. I guess it’s the end of the season for Chokanan and supply is dwindling down.

I thought of trying a new recipe, a slight twist from the regular Lemon Cheesecake that is an all-time family favorite.

This recipe is based on 8” spring-form cake pan. There’s no baking and easy to make. It’s not too sweet, has fresh mango chunks with a hint of sour lemon taste. I used 3 fairly large mangoes weighing about 300g each in this recipe.

Crust base for 8” cake

130g digestive biscuits (McVitie's)

90g melted butter

Fillings

250g cream cheese, softened

75g caster sugar

2½ tsp gelatine

3 tbsp boiling water

4 tbsp fresh mango puree

1½ tbsp fresh lemon juice

200g diced mango

200g whipping cream, whipped

Toppings

170ml water

2 tsp gelatine

2 tsp sugar

1-2 tsp lemon juice

2 drops of lemon yellow coloring

1.      Line the base only of the 8” springform pan and lightly grease the sides of the pan.

2.      Put the digestive biscuit in a food processor or crush them in a plastic bag by ‘pounding’ with a rolling pin or a jam jar (Just don’t break the jam jar) – ha-ha-ha.

3.      Mix in the melted butter with the crush biscuit and press evenly into the base of the pan.

4.      Leave it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

5.       For the fillings, soften 2½ tsp of gelatine in a small with boiling water. Place the small bowl in a larger bowl of ½-full very hot water to help gelatine dissolve.

6.      Beat the cream cheese and caster sugar till very smooth.

7.      Beat in mango puree, lemon juice and dissolved gelatine till well-mixed.

8.      Gently fold in whipped cream and lastly add in the diced mango.

9.      Pour into the biscuit crust base. Level with spatula if needed.

10.  Chill in the fridge for at least 4-6 hours, preferably overnight for it to set.

11.  For the topping, 4 hours later, sprinkle gelatine over water in a small sauce pan. Heat up to dissolve gelative powder and sugar.

12.  Add in lemon juice, stir and turn off the flame.

13.  Add in 2 drops of lemon-yellow coloring. Cool slightly and gently spoon onto the top of the chilled lemon cheesecake.

14.  Chill in the fridge again till topping set.

I know, I can’t wait to try either! I resisted the temptation to open the fridge many times but Max keeps popping his head into the fridge. J

Serve chilled.

I hope you will enjoy the mangoes and the cheesecake as much as we do.