A Strawberry Topping For Cheesecake

This festive ruby coloured Strawberry Topping for Cheesecake went down well on Christmas day (sorry about the poor picture quality on this one - it was snapped in a great hurry, in poor light !)

On Christmas day, one of the dishes I made to take to our neighbours farm for lunch was Strawberry Cheesecake. (You can read that blog post over here). I actually made 2 (as there were a crowd of us – and also because the neighbours kids – who were home from boarding school - love cheesecake so I left one for them to enjoy after Christmas !)

I used one of my favourite recipes – which has featured on the blog before – for ‘Lemon Fridge Cheesecake’. (You can see the post/recipe for that over here.)

The addition of lemon juice to this recipe gives this cheesecake a nice cheesecake-y ‘tang’ so I kept it in and made a strawberry topping for it – so perhaps I should have called it a ‘Lemon Strawberry Cheesecake’ ?

You know when you order cheesecake in a nice restaurant or coffee bar type place and it comes with a jellied sort of fruity topping ? Well, that’s what I was after. I decided to use strawberries as their colour is quite festive and because we can get them here easily. (Sorry the photo above is not great – it was snapped in a hurry as we were about to load the car !)

I found several cheesecake topping recipes both online and in my recipe books, and I combined different things to come up with the recipe & method below. This was the first time I’d ever tried making a cheesecake topping (& I should just mention that because most of the recipes on this blog are one’s I’ve made hundreds of times before & are ‘tried and trusted’) but I reckon that this recipe is a ‘keeper’ -:


Strawberry Topping For Cheesecake

1 cup white Sugar
3 tbsp Cornflour (cornstarch)
1 ½ cups cold Water
1 ½ tbsp Gelatine powder & 2 tbsp boiling water
2 x 420gm (150gm drained weight) tinned Strawberries – drained (reserve juice)
A few drops of Red food colouring

Mix the sugar & cornflour together in pot. Add the water to this, & mix to blend well. Place on a low heat and cook (stirring continuously) until the mixture becomes thick & clear. Dissolve the gelatine powder in the boiling water, and add to the mix, stirring to blend before removing from the heat. Stir in the tinned strawberries & 1 tin of the reserved juice. Add a few drops of red food colouring. Stir again. Pour over the top of the cheesecake. (I’d made mine the day before to ensure that it had set before adding the topping).

Note - Next time I will use fresh strawberries instead of tinned ones, as I think that fresh strawberries have a better colour and are firmer for slicing/nicer display on top of the cheesecake.

An Early Evening Walk Through My Summer Garden .....

It's been so hot here on the farm lately - with hot winds blowing & the sun beating down fiercely all day (we are so close to the equator here that the sun even feels different - and hotter - to how it feels in, say, South Africa - if that makes any sense !) The late afternoon/early evening hours come as a great relief .... when hubby gets home from work, we walk around the cool garden with the kids (with baby son up on hubby's shoulders !) and the dogs.

I try to remember to always take time to stop and smell the flowers. Here are some close-up's above & below of some of the more brightly coloured varieties in my garden at the moment .....

Below is a photo of our farmhouse as the sun starts to sink in the sky .... the white flowers in the foreground of this photograph are Cosmos flowers, planted from seed I brought back from South Africa a couple of years ago ....


This feather fell at my feet yesterday as we were walking around - it has a lovely green & yellow sheen to it although I'm not sure what type of bird it came from. I've always believed that finding feathers at your feet bring good luck.


I loved the way the light was falling across the banana trees in the photo below .....

Dibble & Maxie had fun diving into lush, cool shrubs and looking for rats & things !

This photo below shows the moon .... taken at around 6.30 pm .....

Another view below, of our garden in evening light as the shadows begin to lengthen. My daughter loves climing the Frangipani trees in the foreground of this photo ! (Hubby and I got married on the island of Mauritius, and I chose to have our wedding cake decorated entirely with fresh frangipani flowers, and I always think of that when I see these trees !)

The sun is just starting to set in this photo below - you can see it behind the old fig tree at the bottom of the garden .... and Maxie & Josie, playing on the cool green lawn ....

It's another hot day again today, too ...... the kind of weather where even drinking tea feels uncomfortable .... so I'm off to open myself a cool bottle of water ..... hope that you're keeping cool wherever you are in the world as you read this today ;)

Bottomless Chicken Pie

This 'Bottomless' Chicken Pie is great served with a salad as a light meal .....

This is a quick & easy recipe for chicken pie. I’ve used chicken breast meat in this recipe (pictured above) – only because I had some in the fridge that I needed to use up - you could use any other type of chicken meat for this.

This pie is ‘bottomless’ as it only has a pastry top and no base. There are 3 reasons for this …. firstly because making a base and a top (especially if you pre cook the base a little, which I often do when making pies) takes longer; secondly because if you don’t get it quite right it can result in a soggy base which, in my opinion, just ruins the whole pie & thirdly because a bottomless pie means less of a bottom for you (!!) as half the pastry = half the calories. Ha ha ! (Or … should I just admit that I was too darn lazy to make a pie base ?!)

Anyway, this is also a super quick recipe as you can use ready made pastry for it.

I usually serve this as a light-ish lunch with a salad (& a dollop of good quality mayonnaise on the side !) or as a main meal with mashed potato, gravy and veg.


Bottomless Chicken Pie

Oil for frying
4 Chicken Breasts (or other chicken meat), skin removed & cut in to strips
1 large White Onion
2 x 20 gm sachets Instant Chicken Soup Mix (you could also use Vegetable Soup Mix)
1 cup boiling Water
1 large White Onion
Dried Marjoram
Salt & Pepper to taste
+- ½ pkt/roll of Ready Made Puff Pastry (enough to cover the top of a 25 cm round pie dish)
1 Egg, beaten

Pan fry the chicken & onion in a little oil until browned. Mix the instant soup with the boiling water & stir to blend. Add to the chicken & onion mix in the pan. Stir. Add the dried Marjoram and salt & pepper to taste (the soup mix might make it quite salty already though). Stir everything to blend well and to prevent sticking, turn on to a low heat and allow to simmer for a few minutes before removing from heat.

Allow to cool slightly, then pour into a 25 cm round pie dish. Roll the pastry out into a round, and cover the top of the chicken/onion mix with it. Press the edges to seal, trim off any excess (decorate the surface with off cuts of pastry if you wish), prick in a few places with a fork and then brush the beaten egg over the top of the pastry before placing in the oven and baking at 190‘C/375’F/Gas Mark for around 30 minutes or so, until golden brown.