Lemon Meringue Cheesecake from Dandelion Cafe

I love lemon flavoured desserts and jump at the opportunity to make a good one.  Last week's Atlantic Beach Pie fitted the bill, although it was not overly lemony. 

In the same week, I saw a recipe for Lemon Meringue Cheesecake on Stuff.co.nz, which had come from a café in Lower Hutt, New Zealand called Dandelion Café.  It sounded fabulous, so I decided to give that a try too.

This lemon meringue cheesecake is like a lemon meringue pie in cheesecake form.  The lemon filling is quite tart, despite the ultra sweet addition of condensed milk.  I liked the fact that there are 4 eggs in the recipe and all components of those eggs are used - the yolks in the filling and the whites in the topping.

Things that were perhaps not my favourite were the base, which worked just fine but was a little sparse and was not in my view as good as, say, a crushed biscuit base, and the fact that this cheesecake weeped stickily and copiously for some time after it came out of the oven.  The weeping did eventually stop, but it made quite a sticky mess before it did.

If you are interested in trying this cheesecake, you will need:

Base

1 cup gluten free flour
½  cup sugar
80g melted butter

Filling

400g cream cheese
316g condensed milk
4 egg yolks
4 lemons, juice and rind

Topping

4 egg whites
1 ¼ cup sugar

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 24cm springform pan. 

For the base, combine the flour and sugar and place in a food processor with the melted butter. Blitz until a soft crumb forms, then press evenly into the springform pan.  Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool slightly.  

To make the filling, place the filling ingredients in a food processor and blitz until smooth, then pour over the base.

For the meringue topping, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually beat in the sugar until stiff peaks form. Carefully spread the topping over the  top of the filling, and bake the cheesecake in the oven for around 20 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the oven and allow it to cool to room temperature in the pan on a wire rack, then chill the cheesecake in the pan in the fridge overnight. 

Remove the cheesecake from the pan.  Serve and enjoy.