Streusel Cheesecake with Red Currant

The first summer we bought our house we planted different berries: red currant, gooseberry, and raspberry. We did it way before we started planting flowers, bushes and trees. You can eat them, right, so they came first :) We have plenty of fruits and berries in our cold Canada – homegrown during the summer months and the imported ones during the rest of the year, but for some reason, gooseberries and red currant are not popular and you can barely if at all find them in our grocery stores. That’s why not many Canadians familiar with these beautiful and delicious berries even though you can easily buy their sprouts at any nursery for about $3. And let me tell you that one sprout goes a long way! They require barely any maintenance and grow like crazy. The most difficult part is to pick berries :) but it’s a fun for the whole family! 

Anyway, every year we have more and more berries and I decided to use them in my cooking. This Cheese Cake with Red Currant came out absolutely delicious and I am almost ashamed to report that we ate it in less than a day.  It’s not our fault, really, the cake is so light and fruity, and pretty, it practically disappeared…melted away…We liked this cake so much that I decided to try making it with other fruits and berries, like strawberries or cherries. 
This delicious Cheese Cake with Red Currants screams SUMMER with its silky and creamy cheese filling, crumbly butter dough and absolutely gorgeous berries – Red Currant!  

Ingredients 

275 g unsalted butter, softened
2 cup + 3 tbsp. Sugar 
1 ¼ cup (300 g) flour
500 g Red currant
2 tbsp. Corn starch 
1 cup Red currant or cherry Nectar or juice 
½ tbsp. Vanilla 
1 tbsp. Lemon juice 
2 eggs
500 g Liberté Cream Cheese Product (Quark or No grain dry Cottage cheese)
2.5 tbsp. Vanilla Instant Pudding 
Powdered sugar for decoration (optional) 

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F. 
Remove the red currant from the stems. The easiest way is to pass each stem through the fork and let the berries fell into the bowl. 

Gently wash berries under the running cold water and drain. Spread on a paper or kitchen towel to dry.
Grease 10-inch spring baking form and line it with parchment paper. Set aside.
To cut the parchment paper – place the base of the spring form on the paper and circle it. When cutting, leave about 1 inch extra all around to round it up. I learned the hard way how important is this when a bit of berry syrup escaped through the spring form bottom. Luckily, I suspected that it might happen and placed the form on the baking cookie sheet. It saved me from cleaning the oven afterwards. 
Make Streusel:

In a big bowl, melt 150 g of butter on stove top or in a microwave. 
Mix 2/3 cup of sugar, flour and vanilla and add the dry mixture to the bowl with melted butter. Mix it by hand until it resembles coarse crumbs.
Transfer 2/3 of crumbs to a spring form, spread evenly and lightly press. 
Bake for 10-15 minutes until the dough is a nice golden color.
Make Berry filling:
In a medium bowl, mix 50 ml of nectar with a corn starch until dissolved. (I used cherry juice I bought in a European deli) 

In a small cooking pot, pour 200 ml of nectar. Add 3 tbsp. sugar and bring to a boil.
Add nectar with diluted starch, stir and cook for 1 minute stirring constantly.

Add 3/4 berries, stir in carefully and remove from the heat. Set aside to cool.
Make Cheese filling:
With electric mixer, beat 125g soft butter for a minute until fluffy. Add 125 g sugar and continue beating for a couple of minutes, until integrated well. 
Add lemon juice, and then eggs one at a time, beating each for about half a minute.
Add Instant pudding, mix well, and then add the cream cheese.

You don’t want to use Philadelphia cream cheese for this recipe, but white creamy cheese like Liberté Cream Cheese Product. 
This cheese has a consistency similar to a sour cream, and not the low fat one :)
If you can’t find this cheese, you can use a dry cottage cheese. Pass it through a food processor for smoother texture and add a bit of sour cream for a creamy consistency if needed.
Assemble the cake: 
Transfer the fruit syrup with berries to the spring form and spread evenly on top of dough.
Carefully transfer the cheese mixture on top of the berry filling and spread evenly.
In a separate small bowl, mix the rest of berries with remaining Streusel crumbs and cover the entire cake.

Place the form back into the oven and bake at 400 F for 50-60 minutes. 
Place on the counter to cool completely before transferring the cake to fridge for at least 3 hours, or even better – overnight. 

Before serving, run a knife around edges to release the cake and remove the sides of the form. 
Decorate with powdered sugar and sprigs of currants.
Enjoy this beautiful and delicious cake!