Necessity is the Mother of Invention

I was going to make a gluten free Lemon and Honey Cheesecake, but realised that besides not having a lemon jelly, which I needed for this recipe, I didn’t have any cream. My shopping was already on its way, so it was too late to add it to the list. So – what to do? Well, as you know, necessity is the mother of all inventions. I made a Lime and Lemon Cheesecake instead - using milk instead of cream - by tweaking my Lemon and Honey Cheesecake recipe a little.

Hubby and I had a taste tonight and this was his verdict: ‘Well, you know – it was… (awaiting the usual ‘all right’) ...really nice!’ It was a lighter version, too - although not light on calories, I don’t suppose.


Lemon and Lime Cheesecake

1 lemon and lime jelly (I used crystals)
½ pint water
Just under ½ pint milk (I used semi-skimmed)
200 g low fat cream cheese (or quark)
1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla sugar

For the base:

250 g (1 pack) of gluten free shortcake biscuits
100g melted margarine


Crush biscuits and add to melted margarine, mix well. If you’re tempted to snack on one of the biscuits, make sure you reduce amount of margarine. You don’t want the base swimming in fat (I speak from experience!). Line an 8” loose-bottomed sandwich tin and spread biscuit mix over base. Put it in the fridge to chill and set.

Make the lemon and lime jelly up to ½ pint, then top up with cold milk to 1 pint as though making milk jelly. You may find that it curdles a bit, but this will disappear when everything is mixed together in the final stage. Set aside to cool.

Cream together cream cheese, honey, icing sugar and vanilla sugar, then add the cooled jelly. I then whisked it for about 30 seconds. Put it aside to allow it to start to set.

I placed it in the freezer for about half an hour, so that it wouldn’t be runny going into the tin.

Spread the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit base and put in the fridge to chill and set properly for 3-4 hours.

Serve cold and enjoy.

Tip: As this cheesecake may seem softer than the more usual version, I would leave it in the tin and serve it straight from the tin.


…and this is the recipe that I was going to use…



Lemon and Honey Cheese Cake

Serves 6

250 g gluten free digestive biscuits or similar
125 g butter or margarine
135 g pc lemon jelly
2 tblsp clear honey
300g (10 fl oz) single cream
200 g fromage frais or quark

8” flan tin with loose base, ca 3 cm deep

Crush biscuits, melt butter, mix two together. Grease tin, spread crumbs mix over bottom and press down firmly to make base.
Put base in fridge to chill.

Make jelly in jug, separating into cubes, then add honey, before pouring over ½ pint boiling water. Stir well till jelly dissolves, then leave to cool. Meanwhile, put cream into lge bowl, use wooden spoon to mix in fromage frais/quark, beat till smooth. When jelly mix is cool, pour into the bowl of cream mixture, beat hard with whisk. Pour mixture into flan tin. Put in fridge for about 4 hours to set.

Remove carefully from tin, but leave on base. Keep chilled until ready to serve, and decorate just before serving. I didn’t. I decorated it with lemon and orange sugared jelly slices and it looked great. By the time the birthday party started, the majority of them had slipped off.

Tip: line tin with baking paper!

It takes a long time before this sets. Don’t despair. If you have followed the instructions, it will.



Did you know that… the first cheese cake was served to the athletes at the very first Olympic Games in Greece, in 776 BC? Cream cheese wasn’t around back then, but they used crushed cheese, wheat and an egg to make their original version.
Some time later – or about 1250 year later (in around 1000AD) – the Roman armies brought it to Western Europe. Although we think of it as an American invention, it was brought there by immigrants, and initially relied on cottage cheese as the cheesy ingredient.

Cream cheese was created by accident, when American dairy workers tried recreating a French cheese (in 1872), but it wasn’t until 1912 that pasteurised cream cheese came on the market – and it was this cream cheese that Arnold Reuben, owner of the well known Turf Restaurant in New York, used to make the ‘original’ modern cheese cake.