Passion Fruit Cheesecake

Some Embassies around the world are able to place collective orders for food & groceries from Military Bases within a reasonable distance and have them delivered via refrigerated truck; Moldova is one of those magical places. Last fall I placed an order and even though I was warned about the fact that one had to purchase all the goods in bulk, I foolishly decided to order an entire case of cream cheese. It's not that they don't have cream cheese here, it's just that it comes in tiny tubs and is quite pricey and I was going through {what at the time I thought was} a lot of it by making frosting for my cupcakes & blending some in soups, dips, etc. Well, once I received my freakish amount of cream cheese I realized I better figure out what the heck to do with it before it expired. I had read about how it doesn't really freeze very well, so among other things, I decided to throw together a few cheesecakes to use them up. But alas, no "sneakily try to use up good ingredients before they go bad" plan of mine ever goes unthwarted: how was I going to make a cheesecake if I didn't have graham crackers and refused to substitute them for some kind of mystery crackers from the local grocery store? If you're me and you're crazy, you immediately think, "I wonder if I can make my own graham crackers..." and look up recipes on the internet. Most reasonable people would stop there and realize that their time & effort is much more valuable than the allure of home-made laborious baked goods {that would eventually be crushed into another recipe as one (!) ingredient among many others}, however, I appear to be rather unreasonable and proceeded willy-nilly without thinking it through.
My mom came up with the brilliant idea once to make a cheesecake with maracuja, or Passion Fruit. It is probably my favorite fruit of all time, to the extent that all my cousins in Brazil are constantly giving me maracuja themed gifts like soaps and chewing gum. Unfortunately, even though they sell fresh passion fruit here {shockingly} it is prohibitively expensive {who is buying that stuff here boggles my mind, much like all of the products in the extensive asian food aisle} and I was all out of my little magic bottle of passion fruit concentrate that I had brought with me. So I decided to substitute the passion fruit for frozen berries {yet another ill-conceived bulk purchase}. After countless hours in the kitchen, I froze those suckers for some far-off dinner party and practically forgot about them. Until last week; when I needed something for a game-night we were having with some Moldovan friends and let me tell ya, they were a bigger hit than I could have even imagined. I was getting all kinds of texts the next day about it, including things like "You are an awesome master!" and "Enjoying an unbeliveable good cake..." and even this past weekend those same friends were still reminiscing about the cheesecake-who knew?

Berry-Lemon Cheesecakes

A few years ago I submitted a recipe for my Mom's Passion Fruit Cheesecake to a magazine: they had a contest for subscribers which included several guidelines, one of them being that the recipe had to include "honey" as a main ingredient. Well, I figured I had a shot with this cheesecake recipe even though honey is only in the topping because it is soooooo good. I should admit that I am extremely indebted to Anna Davidson {the owner and genius behind Blackberry Market to whom I owe most of my culinary success and talent} for helping tweak this recipe. This is from the original submission to the magazine, and if you want to make the berry variation, just substitute the passion fruit for the same amount of berries and the zest & juice of a lemon.

My mom is this sweet little Brazilian woman who rarely ventures near the oven but when she does—it’s magical. In fact, because she hates baking so much, she would make me bake cookies and brownies growing up because she still liked eating all the baked goods! So I can thank her for propelling me into the world of baking. She created the original version of this cheesecake by adding maracuja (passion fruit), a very common ingredient in Brazilian cuisine, to a regular cheesecake recipe. I have since tweaked that original a little bit.

The key for me is actually the topping: I could eat the topping by itself all day. I was inspired to create it after eating a delicious French Toast dish at a local restaurant that was topped with a passion fruit sauce of some sort. There is something about the tartness of the passion fruit mixed with the sweetness of the honey that is intoxicating. While adding passion fruit to the batter enhances the flavor of the cheesecake and its light and airy consistency, the real flavor is infused through the honey glaze.

I love this cheesecake so much that I, personally and crazily, made mini passion fruit cheesecakes for my own wedding! Here is a photo below taken by our wedding photographer:

Photo Courtesy of Tony Hoffer from Hoffer Photography

Ingredients

For the crust:

1 ¼ cup graham cracker crumbs

1 ½ T sugar

2 ½ oz butter, melted

For the filling:

16 oz softened cream cheese

1 cup sugar

½ cup passion fruit concentrate (can be found in Brazilian stores as Maracuja or ordered online—comes frozen and can be called passion fruit puree)

¼ cup sour cream

¼ t vanilla

1 T all-purpose flour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

For the topping:

Fresh berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries)

¼ cup Passion Fruit Concentrate

¼ cup Honey

Fresh mint leaves, for decoration.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300º

Mix the melted butter, sugar and graham cracker crumbs to make the crust. Place mixture in an 8-inch spring form pan and pack down, evenly, to create the crust. Bake for 10-15 minutes until it sets.

In a mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the cream cheese with the sugar until fluffy. Add the passion fruit concentrate, sour cream, vanilla and flour and mix until smooth and well incorporated. Add the eggs and mix just until incorporated—DO NOT OVERBEAT THE EGGS! You might even want to fold them in by hand.

Pour batter into the pan, and bake (low and slow) for at least 1 hour, until the top is a little golden and the cheesecake is firm. Let cool, and then place either in the freezer or refrigerator to cool. For clean-cut slices of cheesecake it is best to freeze it, cut it while frozen, and defrost before eating.

For the topping, mix the passion fruit concentrate with the honey, adjusting for sweetness as desired. Top the cooled cheesecake with the berries, mint, and the honey mixture.

Enjoy!