Strawberry Cheesecake with Crispy Base

Dough:

1. Put the flour, sugar, egg, butter and salt in a bowl and knead with your hands to form a smooth dough. Wrap in foil and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 190 ° O / bottom heat. Line a size 22 shape on the bottom and on the edge with baking paper. The paper at the edge must be almost twice as high as the shape. Roll out the dough around 24 cm in diameter, line the mold with it and pull it up around 1 cm around the edge. Then prick the base several times with a fork, cover it with baking paper (also cut out around 24 cm) and sprinkle with peas (so-called blind-back peas).
3. Bake the base for 15 minutes on the middle shelf, then remove it immediately. Keep ready.

Strawberry curd mass:

1. Wash the strawberries, remove the green, cut into small pieces and place in a higher container. Wash the lemon, dry it, grate half of it and then squeeze it all out. Add the juice and zest to the strawberries and puree everything with the hand blender. Keep ready.
2. Separate eggs and keep them ready. Mix 100 g sugar, flour, vanilla sugar and strawberry puree well with a whisk. Gradually add the egg yolks, quark and cream and stir in.
3. Beat the egg whites with salt to form very stiff snow. Then gradually add the remaining 100 g of sugar and keep beating until it has dissolved. Then add the starch and beat again until a firm, creamy egg white has formed. (the stirring hooks must leave a visible pattern)
4. First stir in 1/3 of the mixture with a whisk and then fold in the rest with a spatula.

Completion:

1. Turn the oven down to 170 ° O / bottom heat. Remove the peas and baking paper from the pre-baked, still slightly warm base. Pour in the quark mixture, making sure that the baking paper sticking out over the edge stays upright. Put the form in the oven on the lowest rail and bake for 20 minutes. Then pull it out of the oven briefly and cut into it with a sharp knife 1 cm from the edge. This ensures that the cake stays level in the middle and does not tear. Put the cake back in the oven and bake for another 30 minutes. Then switch off the oven, open the door slightly, leave the cake in it for at least 10 – 15 minutes and only then take it out to cool down. Take the cake out of the tin and remove the paper from the bottom and edge.
2. For the decoration and as a side dish (if desired) – depending on the number of people – wash the strawberries, remove the greens, cut into small pieces, sweeten a little with the icing sugar and serve with the cake. ….. if you like additional calories, you can of course also add whipped cream …….. ;-))))

Tip:

1. If you want to bake this creamy cheesecake without strawberries, you can use 100 ml milk and 250 ml cream instead of 200 g strawberries for the puree and 150 ml cream. Otherwise everything as described above ………..
2. I purposely chose a smaller shape because I wanted a fairly tall cake. The larger the shape, the flatter it becomes. The baking paper on the edge should still protrude a little bit. For larger shapes, it is advisable to double the amount of dough.