Passion fruit fromage blanc cheesecake

This is the recipe for a fruity and light passion fruit fromage blanc cheesecake.

After a few attempts I finally succeeded in making the texture of cheesecake just right without using cream cheese. For sure, cream cheese is very good, but it has such a high fat content and is so expensive in Israel considering the quantity needed that I always thought twice about making a cheesecake.

Also, while many recipes call for the usual store-bought Graham crackers to make the crust, I didn’t want to use processed biscuits and made instead a crust from scratch using both whole wheat and plain flours.

I am very happy about the result – we liked it very much, and if you do the recipe, I hope you will like it too! In any case, please let me know what you think :-)

The quantities in the recipe here are for 12 servings. This passion fruit fromage blanc cheesecake is ready in 85 minutes or so, plus at least 4 hours of chilling time.

Ingredients

For the crust:

• ½ cup of whole wheat flour
• ½ cup of plain flour
• ¼ teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons of Demerara sugar
• 3 tablespoons of butter, softened
• 1 large egg, yolk
• ½ teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

For the filling:

• 1 cup of passion fruit pulp (it’s about 10 medium or 15 small passion fruits)
• 2 cups of fromage blanc at 3%
• 1 cup of fromage blanc at 5%
• ½ cup of Demerara sugar
• ⅓ cup of plain flour
• 1 cup of half and half
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs

Preparation

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees Celsius.

Line the base of a round cake tin (I used a 22-cm one) with some parchment paper (I placed the cake tin on a parchment paper, drawn around and cut the disk with scissors leaving outside the pencil mark).

Prepare the crust: in a mixing bowl, mix the flours, baking powder and salt, and set aside. In a small bowl, mix the sugar and butter until pale. Stir in the egg yolk and vanilla extract. Incorporate the butter/sugar mixture to the flour mixture, and combine with the hands until everything is moistened and to a sandy consistency. Spread evenly and press the mixture at the bottom of the cake tin. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it cool while preparing the filling.

Prepare the passion fruit purée: cut the fruits into halves and collect the pulp with a teaspoon. Blend the pulp for a few seconds in the blender. Sieve into a bowl to remove the pieces of seeds, pushing with a spoon to get as much juice as possible. Set aside.

Place the two types of fromage blanc in a mixing bowl, and whisk with a hand mixer at high speed until fluffy. Add the sugar and mix well. Stir in the flour and mix well. Add the half and half, the passion fruit purée, vanilla extract and mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each addition.

Pour the passion fruit/fromage blanc mixture in the cake tin above the prepared crust. Bake for 50 minutes or until firm and slightly golden. Remove from the oven, and place the cheesecake on a rack. Open and remove the belt of the cake tin and let the cake cool completely (a bit over 2 hours) covered with a clean towel, then fridge for at least 2 hours before serving. And enjoy!