Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and today we are making this beautiful summery
watermelon cheesecake dessert ... even though it is not summer here in Australia.
But I have some exciting news, the T-Shirts have arrived!
This one is a limited edition 'Make It A Great Week' silver foil design and there are other
designs in the store that you can go and check out but this one is only available for the
next 10 days only.
So make sure you check on the link below and go get one of these as well.
Now to make this dessert what we need to do first is to make the base.
So we are going to need some biscuits and some margarine and a little bit of green gel
food colouring.
Take you biscuits and using a rolling pin crush them into fine crumbs.
I'll put all the recipe quantities on the howtocookthat.net website and I'll link to
that below for you.
If you have a food processor you can use that for this instead if you like.
Then take the margarine and melt it in the microwave or on the stovetop then pour in
the biscuit crumbs and give that a quick stir, then add in the food colouring.
And we want to stir that really well to incorporate the green colour all the way through and squash
any big bits of biscuit chunks.
Then repeat that process, this time using red food colouring to make red crumbs.
Pour the red into a loose based cake tin or pie dish and use the back of a spoon to squash
it flat all around the base there.
Now we need to make a bit of room for the green rind of the watermelon so run your knife
around the edge to loosen a line of red and take it out.
Then take a small handful of green and squeeze it together to make it clump together, and
then squash that onto the side of the tin.
Continue to do that the whole way around the tin and then use your spoon again to flatten
and smooth it around.
And then to make the top level just again use the back of your spoon to push it down
so it looks like an even watermelon rind.
For the white part we need cream cheese, it should be the block cream cheese, sugar, milk,
water, gelatin and cream.
Tip the gelatin into the water and stir it up and then leave that to absorb the water.
Whip the cream to make soft peaks and then you want to set that to one side.
Now we are going to beat the cream cheese with electric mixers until it is smooth, and
then add in the sugar.
All these ingredients should be at room temperature so that when we add the gelatine in a minute
it doesn't instantly set, we need time to be able to pour it in.
Add in the milk... and then heat the gelatin in the microwave until it is melted.
And pour that into the cream cheese mixture and beat it quickly.
Add the whipped cream to the mixture and fold it through gently, this is just adding some
air to the mixture so it's a little bit fluffy.
Add about a cup of that mixture into a bowl and add some red gel food colouring to it
and mix it through.
And then spread that out on the base, and this is going to seal the biscuit crumbs so
they don't become soft when we add the filling later on.
Now turn a bowl upside down in the centre and pipe your cheesecake mixture around the
edge.
Now if you use a bigger bowl you'll have less white - which is more like on a real watermelon,
but I wanted more cheesecake in mine so I've got a bit of a smaller bowl and I'll make
the white a bit thicker.
Then you want to place that in the fridge to set.
For the filling you need some yummy fresh watermelon, a packet of strawberry jelly or
jello and some water.
Tip the jelly crystals into the water and stir it well and this is just cold water it's
not heated up yet.
Then place the watermelon into a blender and blitz it to make juice.
Tip that through a fine sieve to get rid of any little seeds, I think we've got a couple
accidentally in there, and the coarse bits of pulp because we want our jelly to end up
smooth and clear.
Heat the jelly mixture until the sugar and the gelatine are melted , you don't want any
sugar crystals left you want it nice and smooth in your mouth.
Then pour that into the watermelon juice and mix it up.
This really has a great fresh watermelon flavour to this jelly.
Now that the cheesecake mixture is set, run a knife around the edge of the bowl, and then
wiggle it to loosen it and then carefully lift it up, I'll just use a fork to get that
up and out of the centre of the dessert.
And then use your knife to spread the cheesecake mixture over any gaps just to seal that so
we don't get the jelly going through.
Then pour the watermelon jelly into the middle just until it's at the same level as the cheesecake.
And then use the back of a spoon to pop any bubbles and then you want to put that in the
fridge to set.
For the watermelon seeds or pips place some chocolate into a bowl and melt it in the microwave.
And then pour that into a piping bag and cut off just the very tip, if you don't have a
piping bag.
When you are melting chocolate in the microwave just do 30 second stir, 20 second stir and
then bursts of 10 seconds until it's completely melted.
We don't need to temper it for these pips.
Cut off just the very tip of the piping bag and if you don't have a piping bag you can
use just a plastic bag for this.
Pipe a dot then drag it slightly to one side to make the shape of the pips.
So just make a dot and drag it to one side.
Then give the paper a little shake to smooth off the top.
And let them set in the fridge.
To get the dessert out of the tin place a glass underneath and push down so the sides
just slide off the tin.
Remove the base and place it onto a cutting board.
And then pull out the paper out from underneath, because we don't want to eat that.
Take some green food colouring and paint some crooked lines up around the edge of the cheesecake
so that it looks like watermelon skin does.
It's not all the one colour, it changes as it goes around.
Then using tweezers carefully add the chocolate watermelon pips into place in two rows around
the outside.
Then cut that into wedges and serve it cold.
Share this video with someone who likes watermelon, don't forget to grab yourself a T-Shirt I'll
put the link for that below.
Subscribe to HowToCookThat for more cakes chocolate and desserts,
Click here for the recipe, here for my YouTube channel
and here for last week's Candy cake & iPad giveaway.
And Ann Fan of the week goes to Danee Kaplan who wrote such a beautiful comment a couple
of weeks ago, it really encouraged me so thanks for that Danee.
Make it a great week and I'll see you Friday.
(Wait for the Bloopers...)
Welcome to ... oh airplane!
There's a kookaburra, I wish he'd laugh for you, I don't think he's going to today.
... I'll put a link to that below ... wow, more birds, that's a Cockatoo not a Pterodactyl!
Welcome to How To ... what was that?
I hope that was water and not bird poo!