Lemon and Lavender Cheesecake

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Comments:

A nice floral touch on an ordinary cheesecake. Using half-half cream cheese and mascarpone also makes it a little lighter than your regular cheesecake which I think is nice.

If you want to make this in the oven instead of the instant pot, you'll need to tightly wrap your cake tin in foil to stop water getting in, then put it in a waterbath (it helps if you put a tea towel on the bottom of the dish then put the cake tin on top of the tea towel, to stop it sliding) and bake at 160 degrees for 1 and a half hours, or until the batter is cooked but the centre is still jiggly.

Ingredients

For the crust:

• 180g biscuits (walkers shortbread biscuits or digestives or similar also work fine)
• 100g butter, melted
• 1 Tbsp lemon zest
• 1/2 Tbsp dried lavendar buds

For the cake:

• 250g cream cheese (I've also done 200g which works fine too), room temperature
• 250g mascarpone, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 Tbsp dried lavendar buds
• 2 Tbsp lemon zest
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, room temperature

Method

1. Take the mascarpone and cream cheese out of the fridge hours in advance. They take a while to soften up.
2. Line a 20cm springform tin with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 180 degrees (160 fan).
3. Whiz up 1 Tbsp of the dried lavendar buds in a food processor and set aside for the cake batter (it's easier to do this first, before you make the crust, so you don't have to clean the food processor in between)
4. Then put the biscuits, 1/2 Tbsp lavendar buds, and 1 Tbsp lemon zest into the food processor and process them until finely ground
5. Add the melted butter and process until combined. It should be a damp crumb.
6. Press the crumb into the tin, going up the sides a bit as well if you like
7. Bake the crust in the oven for 12 minutes, or until lightly golden, then remove to cool completely. It will harden as it cools.
8. Beat the mascarpone, cream cheese and sugar together with electric beaters until smooth
9. Beat in the lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and lavendar buds that you ground up in the beginning.
10. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated each time.
11. If you have time, I would let the batter sit for maybe 20 minutes at this point, to let some of the air bubbles get out of the batter. This stops it sinking later when you bake it. Alternatively you can drop it on the bench a few times to get rid of air bubbles, or go through with your beaters on a low speed.
12. Place the trivet in the instant pot and pour over 1 cup of water, maybe add a teensy bit more water if there's space under the trivet but 1 cup should be enough. If you're doing it in the oven in a water bath, pour in enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the cake pan.
13. Place the tin with the cooled crust in the instant pot (I find it easier to put the crust in first then pour in the cheesecake batter, otherwise it's hard to get the tin in the instant pot without spilling the batter)
14. Pour the cheesecake batter into the tin
15. Cover the top lightly with foil (to stop condensation dripping onto the cheesecake) and cook at high pressure for 25 minutes
16. Do a 10 minute natural release, followed by a quick release
17. Remove cheesecake from instant pot, it should be cooked but still jiggly in the centre. Cool then transfer to the fridge to set for a further 4 hours at least.