Malted Milk Cheesecake with Rhubarb Topping
Or how not to rue rhubarb season
The internet goes mad for forced rhubarb and how could it not? Vibrant pink and boasting a unique tartness that makes it the perfect fruit to stand up to sweet bakes and treats, it's popular for good reason. Plus, if it could speak it would have a West Yorkshire accent. In its honour I bring you this Malted Milk and Rhubarb Cheesecake. Further down I'm reviewing Dough Hands pizza, which is being baked out of a Nunhead pub that may have lost its way but not its promise of a good meal...
The classic rhubarb pairing is, of course, custard. But ever since I bought a tub of Horlicks after seeing, baking and eating Rosa Tahoe Williams' delicious malted milk loaf with white chocolate ganache, I have had malted milk bakes on the brain. I thought it’d make a great cheesecake with malted milk biccies as the base. I'm happy to report.... I was right.
Having now been in the possession of my Horlicks for a couple of months and having enjoyed a fair few mugs of the stuff, I knew it had the potential to hurt ones teeth with its sweetness. There was a risk that a malted milk cheesecake could be too sweet, and in my first, structurally unsound test, it was. My first test was also thwarted by too much sour cream and not enough egg for stability. So I scaled back a bit on sugar and sour cream, and scaled up a bit on egg, and the result is a lovely and biscuity flavoured filling with a humming sweet maltiness that doesn't whack you over the head with sucrose.
The great thing about cheesecake is it’s pretty easy for a baking novice: you don’t need to worry about gluten development or raising agents. And if you use a water bath you can get an impressively creamy texture which makes the perfect sweet bed for a topping of tart rhubarb, lightly roasted and blushing fuchsia. I hope you'll give it a go!
Cheesecake does demand decent cream cheese, and I have now baked with Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Aldi’s versions of ‘soft cheeses’ as they call them. I declare Aldi’s the best. As with their full-fat yogurt, it's actually creamy with fat and much less watery than Tesco and Sainsbury's equivalents. If you can afford or find better cream cheese, please go for gold!
Rhubarb is one of the best fruits to cook with, alongside apples (often overlooked because they're not as fluro, but hard to beat in a cake or pie). Back to rhubarb though... I love seeing what all the clever bakers are doing with the pink sticks at this time of year, and then trying my own hand at turning it into something extravagant. In past years I’ve tried Nicola Lamb’s rhubarb martozzi (below), Nigella's toasted marshmallow and rhubarb cake (the sugar rush of all sugar rushes), and Stroma Sinclair's own rhubarb meringue stack which featured on the newsletter a couple of years ago (Stroma has just started her own Substack here which is already brilliant – see today’s post on jelly).
And a rhubarb creation that I simply have to alert you to this year is this incredible rhubarb dome cake by Lydia Weedon... A work of art – Lydia I salute you!!
Now we’re suitably inspired, let’s cook!