‘Formerly’ and ‘subsequently’ cheesecakes. Baking the OED.

Cheesecake
1. Formerly: †a tart or pie containing a mixture originally including cheese, later usually curds or cream, eggs, sugar, butter, and various flavourings (obsolete). Subsequently: a dessert or sweet dish made from a mixture of cream cheese, sugar, and eggs on a base of cake or crushed biscuits, sometimes containing or topped with fruit, and either baked or chilled.

Oxford English Dictionary, first published 1928

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Historically, cheesecake is not something that I’d rush to order a slice of. If I fancy something sweet, I’m much more inclined to go for a scoop of ice-cream, a dessert made with sharp fruits, or, most often, a cheese plate. But the thing about working in a kitchen with my pal Livvy Potts is that she’s just that good at making extraordinary desserts. Her cheesecake is rich, dense, not too sweet, and with the sort of delightful texture that clings to the fork – nothing like the sickly, sticky, cloying cheesecakes you could order when I was growing up, or the dry, crumbling, unappetising ones that stayed too long in the oven. Hers is a cheesecake I find myself thinking about still now, months after I last had a slice of it. And it’s a cheesecake that inspired some research into the etymology of the word, curious about the diversity of desserts that carry the name.

Early cheesecakes (cheese cakes, or occasionally cheese-cakes) were just that: cakes made with cheese, and relatively unrecognisable to us today as a sweet pudding. The first known recorded recipe is a vague one, from De Re Rustica, a treatise on agriculture written by Roman politician, and directs that cheese should be crushed, flour and an egg added to it, and that it should be cooked slowly, in a hot fire. Similar cheese cakes were offered to athletes during the first Olympic Games in Greece.

Roman armies brought their cheese cakes to Britain, and to Northern Europe, more than 1000 years ago. By Tudor times, recipes for a ‘tarte of Chese’ existed, which directed that cheese should be soaked in milk, pounded, mixed with eggs, sugar and butter, and baked. A 17th century recipe, calling for lemon, egg yolks, sugar, and butter, sounds like an unlikely cheesecake recipe – made, as it is, without cheese. However, it was referred to as such, and a version of this recipe is one we use today – now called lemon curd (or lemon cheese).

In the 18th century, Hannah Glasse’s tome The Art of Cookery included a recipe for a cheesecake made from curd cheese, sugar, egg yolks, and butter, flavoured with lemon peel, and baked into a case made from puff pastry. It’s a recipe that bears a resemblance to some cheesecakes we still eat now, particularly the Italian ones, made with soft ricotta curds.

But it was the invention of cream cheese in the late 19th century that had the biggest impact on the cheesecakes we have cooked and eaten since. William Lawrence, an American who was attempting to recreate Neufchatel, a creamy and slightly crumbly French cheese, instead created the first smooth, rich, un-ripened cream cheese. It is now a standard ingredient in both cooked and uncooked cheesecakes; the smooth and creamy texture it lends is a feature of most contemporary cheesecakes.

Like many of the recipes since Tudor times, modern cheesecake is really more of a tart than a cake – a mixture of cheese, sugar, and eggs, on top of a base made from pastry, or from crushed biscuits combined with butter. It can be flavoured with myriad fruits, spices, or sweeteners, often influenced by country and region. My friend Livvy makes hers with some dark muscavado sugar, and a base of malted milk biscuits. It is a joy – as is (I hope you’ll agree) my gently citrusy, pillowy soft, ricotta version below.

Formerly

Based on Hannah Glasse’s 18thC recipe in The Art of Cookery

Makes 6 

Ingredients
Cheese
500ml whole milk
3tbsp lemon juice
Filling
Strips of zest from one lemon
60g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
115g butter, melted and cooled
And
A block of puff pastry

1. First, make the cheese. Bring the milk to a gentle simmer in a saucepan, until it reaches 80C. Add the lemon juice and stir; the milk will separate into curds and whey. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes, and then strain through a sheet of muslin before allowing the curds to sit for twenty minutes or so, until soft, and still a little damp.

2. Preheat the oven to 180C. Cover the zest with a little water in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, and cook until the zest is softened. Keep an eye on it, as you don’t want the pan to boil dry.

3. Put the softened zest in a mortar and pestle with the sugar. Pound the sugar to flavour it with the zest, then remove the zest and whisk the sugar with the egg yolks, and 125g of the curds. Whisk in the cooled butter.

4. Roll out the puff pastry, until it is a couple of millimeters thick, cut into discs and use to line six small tart shells. Divide the filling between the cases, and transfer to the oven. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, until golden on top.

Subsequently

Serves 8 

Ingredients
Base
150g hobnobs
50g butter, melted
Top
250g ricotta
160g cream cheese
60g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs, separated
1tbsp Marsala
Grated zest of lemon and orange

1. Strain the ricotta through a sieve, to get rid of any excess liquid. Preheat the oven to 150C (fan), and grease and line a loose-bottomed 15cm cake tin* with greaseproof paper. Wrap tightly in two sheets of foil.

2. Blitz the biscuits to a fine powder in a food processor, and then mix the melted butter through them. Tip this mix into the base of the cake tin, and press it down firmly with a glass. Transfer to the oven for 10 minutes.

3. In the meantime, whisk together the ricotta, cream cheese, sugar, and egg yolks. Fold through the Marsala and the grated zest. 

4. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks, and then fold these gently through the cheesecake mixture. Pour over the base, and then place the tin in a roasting dish. Transfer to the oven, and pour boiling water into the dish, so that it comes halfway up the sides of the cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes, until the cheesecake is set, but still has a wobble in the centre.

5. Take the cheesecake out of the roasting dish, but leave in the oven, with the door open, while it cools down.

*Either a tight fitting loose-bottomed cake tin, or a springform tin will work; make sure you’re not using a tin that has a tendency to leak.  

This piece was written to celebrate the 90th birthday of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s the only book in the world that includes, in its pages, all of my favourite words, like obsequious, elixir, imbue, conundrum, soporific, and mellifluous. And cheesecake.

Midsummer Cake. I Capture the Castle.

We burnt the salt and the herbs (in America it is correct to drop the h in herbs - it does sound odd) and shared the cake with Héloïse; Simon only had a very small piece, because he was full of dinner.

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

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This week was Midsummer, a celebration of the summer solstice: the day when the sun is highest in the sky, and there is the longest period of daylight. Here in the Cotswolds, we watched the sun slowly descend, in glorious shades of orange and red, and then finally slip over the horizon at about 11pm. I've not, in any of the years I was in London, been as aware of English seasons as I am now. Perhaps it's the obvious arrival of summer - the pollen that's been driving me slowly insane over the past fortnight, or the heatwave that makes working outside in the sun impossible.

But I think it's more likely that I am living surrounded by neighbours who bring a small bowl of redcurrants straight from the bush in their garden. That I can point out the budding apple blossom, or walk off up to the Common to collect elderflowers. That the tree I duck under on my running route is now covered with glorious yellow flowers - I risk bumping my head on the church gate every time I avoid it. That I can see the new produce in our local farmer's market each week; I've kept a list of the food as it appears, already making plans for next year's bounty. I can see, with astounding clarity, the seasons shift and change. 

Without wanting to wish away the months of asparagus, and broad beans, and strawberries, passing the midpoint of the year also reminds me that we're heading into autumn, my favourite season. By the time it arrives, I will have finished drafting my next book, and this feels worthy of acknowledgement, (panic, obviously), and a small personal celebration. I turned, as I so often do at this time of year, to my very favourite book, rereading I Capture the Castle during one long, impossibly warm night, as sleep eluded me.

Though I have featured it in this column before, I felt compelled to include it one final time. This week turned out to be perfect. Towards the end of the book, with her beloved sister Rose in London, Cassandra celebrates Midsummer alone, carrying out long-standing family rituals: making a garland of flowers, burning salt and herbs, eating a ceremonial cake, lighting a bonfire, and then - slightly more unexpectedly - a snog with her sister's fiancé, Simon, who arrives as she is dancing around the flames. This is a version of the cake, a riff on a Swedish Midsommar recipe that Cassandra, suddenly able to buy groceries again, after years of poverty, could have pulled together.

This will be my final Novel Recipes column for the Guardian. It's been a joy to write over the past three years - thank you for reading it, sharing it, and cooking from it. If you'd like to keep in touch, about my next book, upcoming events, or my other writing, keep an eye on my website: The Little Library Cafe.

Cassandra's Midsummer Cake

Serves 10

Ingredients
Cake
6 eggs
225g golden caster sugar
3tbsp elderflower cordial
190g plain flour
Cream
400ml double cream
2tbsp elderflower cordial
And
400g strawberries
Thyme, mint, edible flowers (optional)

Equipment
Two mixing bowls
Electric whisk (or a whisk and good arm muscles)
Three 20cm sandwich tins
Greaseproof paper
Spatula

1. Heat the oven to 160C (fan). Separate the eggs, and put the yolks in one mixing bowl, and the whites in the other. Add the sugar and cordial to the yolks, and whisk until pale and smooth. Beat in the flour.

2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, and fold a third into the yolks to loosen the batter. Fold in the other two thirds. Divide the batter between three well greased and lined sandwich tins (you can do this in batches if you don't have three tins).

3. Transfer to the oven for 20 minutes, until the cakes are risen, golden, and coming away from the sides of the tins. Bring the cakes out of the oven, cool for five minutes in their tins, and then completely on a wire rack. 

4. Pour the cream and elderflower into a clean bowl, and beat by hand to soft, billowy peaks. Go slowly towards the end, as it's so easy to overmix, and for the cream to split - especially in summer. 

5. Finally, layer up the cake. Hull all the strawberries, saving a handful of the  prettiest ones for the top, and slice the larger ones into pieces. Spread a third of the cream onto one of the cakes, top with strawberries, and then place another cake on top. Spread with another third of the cream, then more strawberries. Place the final cake on top, then top with the cream, and decorate with strawberries, thyme, mint, and edible flowers. Store in the fridge until you're ready to eat it, and serve in generous slices. 

Jam Roly-Poly. Diary of a Provincial Lady.

Am horrified to see that supper, awaiting her on the table, consists of cheese, pickles, and slice of jam roly-poly, grouped on a single plate – (Would not this suggest to the artistic mind a Still-life Study in Modern Art?) – flanked by a colossal jug of water.

Diary of a Provincial Lady, E. M. Delafield

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Bake Off (the first seven series – the BBC ones) is up on Netflix. While I’ve been trialing recipes for my next book, it’s been playing in the background; I’ve watched a whirlwind of cake, tears, tantrums, and puns in the past couple of weeks. I’ve watched a procession of completely mad bakes – homemade fondant fancies and teacakes, filo stretched over oiled forearms, lacy pancakes squeezed into frying pans, foot-high biscuit constructions. But there are also so many things that made me want to abandon my strict list of recipes to test: frangipane tarts with buttery shortcrust, black pudding sausage rolls, kouign-amann. I’ve also been lusting after suet puddings – the kind of baking I didn’t grow up with, and had only read about before moving to England.

I thought I’d missed the boat last week, when the glorious sunshine meant I couldn’t imagine anything less welcome than a steamed pudding. This is an English April though – as I write, the rain is drumming against my window and it’s a brisk twelve degrees outside. So there’s no reason not to make a jam roly-poly. If you’ve never had one, it’s a suet pastry spread with jam and rolled up like a Swiss roll, before being steamed. The recipe is almost laughably simple – Mrs Beeton’s nineteenth century version calls for just jam, flour, suet, and water. I’ve added butter and milk in the version below, like most twentieth century recipes, which give the roly-poly a richer, sweeter taste.

I read The Diary of a Provincial Lady last year, and the roly-poly on this bizarre plate of food stayed with me. Not only did a steamed pudding sound like an odd choice for July, I felt, like the titular Provincial Lady, horrified at the thought of it alongside cheese and pickles. The book itself is a wonderfully dry, witty work – a fictional diary (with undeniably autobiographical elements) that documents the daily minutiae in the life of a Devon wife and mother in 1930. Originally published in serial form in Time and Tide, the book is filled with the character’s constant battles with her cook (negotiating over cold beef and beetroot, while hoping for roast chicken and bread sauce), collection of ridiculous neighbors, her perpetually bored and unimpressed husband Robert, and her wish to "maintain the detached attitude of a modern mother" when dealing with her children Vicky and Robin. It’s self-deprecating and self-aware, genuinely hilarious, and an enormous amount of fun; a perfect book for spring.

Jam Roly-Poly

Serves 6

Ingredients
225g self-raising flour (plus more for dusting)
40g salted butter
60g suet
170ml whole milk
150g raspberry jam

Equipment
Mixing bowl
Butter knife
Tin foil
Greaseproof paper
Rolling pin
Roasting dish

1. Place an oven tray at the base of the oven, and fill it with water. Make sure there’s an oven tray or rack in the centre of the oven. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Tip the flour into the bowl and rub the butter in with your fingertips. Mix the suet through the flour. Pour in the milk, then use the knife to cut it through. Bring the pastry together with your hands.

3. Dust your work surface with flour and then roll out the pastry with a floured rolling pin. Aim for a square about 25cm wide. Spread jam over all the dough, save for an inch along one edge. Roll it up towards the non-jam edge, pinching the dough closed down the length and at both ends.

4. Spread out a sheet of tin foil, and place a sheet of greaseproof paper on top. Place the roly-poly, seam side down, on the paper. Roll it up loosely in the paper (it will expand while baking), and then scrunch the foil around it too.

5. Place it in the roasting dish. Transfer to the oven for 70 minutes. Leave to cool for a little and then serve warm. If you cut into it straight out of the oven, it might crumble when you cut it, and you’ll lose the swirl a little (like I did), so be patient. It’s great with custard, but not so good with cheese and pickles.

Apple Crumble. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4.

Commonwealth Day

Cleaned toilet, washed basin and bath before doing my paper round. Came home, made breakfast, put washing in machine, went to school. Gave Barry Kent his menaces money, went to Bert Baxter’s, waited for social worker who didn’t come, had school dinner. Had Domestic Science—made apple crumble. Came home. Vacuumed hall, lounge, and breakfast room. Peeled potatoes, chopped up cabbage, cut finger, rinsed blood off cabbage. Put chops under grill, looked in cookery book for a recipe for gravy. Made gravy. Strained lumps out with a colander. Set table, served dinner, washed up. Put burnt saucepans in to soak. Got washing out of machine; everything blue, including white underwear and handkerchiefs. Hung washing on clothes-horse. Fed dog. Ironed PE kit, cleaned shoes. Did homework. Took dog for a walk, had bath. Cleaned bath. Made three cups of tea. Washed cups up. Went to bed. Just my luck to have an assertive mother!

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4, Sue Townsend

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This week has felt like a long, hard, relentless slog. I’ve been surrounded by brilliant people, have laughed endlessly, and have managed to do some wonderful things. But it’s been one of those weeks where everything seems to run together, job bumping up against job, a list of things to tackle so endless that it’s impossible to know where to begin. A thousand thoughts and plans have been running through my head in spare seconds on the train, or while the kettle boils, of books I’ve been reading, or recipes I want to trial, or plans I have for events, or columns, or the next book. They’re ideas for other weeks. Here, in the midst the frenzy, I returned to the familiar.

This morning, it was drizzling as I walked to work. I arrived with raindrops trickling down inside my collar and dripping from my hair into my eyes. When I shrugged back into my coat tonight, ten hours later, it was still cold, and slightly damp. It’s almost April, and we’d be forgiven for expecting that spring should have arrived in earnest. Instead, it’s likely we’ll see snow again this weekend. Selfishly, I’m thrilled; I missed most of winter this year, and this type of weather provides the perfect excuse for an evening of hibernation.

So tonight, I ducked out of the work drinks I’d hoped to attend, and walked a winding route back to the station, listening to Adrian Mole’s teenage diaries on audiobook. I read them when I was around his age – a young teenager – and have never tired of them; this first book in particular has provided endless comfort and amusement. You probably don’t need me to tell you, but it’s laugh-out-loud funny, packed with perfectly drawn characters, and genuinely moving in parts too. It is also filled with references to food: school dinners, a failed attempt at coq au vin, Sunday lunches, a warming slice of dripping toast. But tonight I latched onto the crumble – a mere passing mention – it’s the perfect dish for a cold night in.

The apples bubbled away in the oven while I stirred custard and listened to more of Adrian’s trials and tribulations. And then, late at night, I dished it up for some friends who had just arrived back; I’m not sure I can think of a more comforting dish to come home to. The ingredients are mostly humble, and probably available in your local corner shop. You can buy the custard, if you prefer, or make it according to the directions on Bird’s tin. You can add other fruit, if you like – rhubarb, of course, or a handful of berries, or some pears. Change up the spicing, if nutmeg isn’t your bag (cinnamon is good, as is cardamom, or ginger), or add chopped nuts to your crumble mix, if you fancy. You can even store crumble mix in the freezer, like my dear friend Liv taught me to do, in anticipation of a crumble emergency. There are so few rules here; it really is the easiest possible version of baking. This is comfort food, and comfort cooking, at its most reassuring: just what I needed this week.

Apple Crumble and Custard

Serves up to 6 (but 3 or 4 could easily polish it off)

Ingredients
Crumble
1.25kg cooking apples
150g light brown sugar
¼tsp nutmeg
200g plain flour
150g salted butter
50g porridge oats
Custard
150ml whole milk
150ml double cream
3 egg yolks
50g light brown sugar
¼tsp vanilla bean paste/vanilla extract

Equipment
Vegetable peeler
Knife
Saucepan
Wooden spoon
Mixing bowl
Ovenproof dish
Whisk

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan). Peel, core, and chop the apples, and tip them into the saucepan with 75g of the sugar, and a splash of water. Simmer until the chunks of apple have softened and are starting to break down. Turn off the heat and season with nutmeg.

2. Meanwhile, rub the flour and butter together with you fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Mix in the other 75g of sugar and the oats, and set aside.

3. Tip the apples into the oven dish, and then wet your hands with cold water. With damp hands, squeeze handfuls of crumble together (to encourage them to clump a bit) and drop it onto the apples. Transfer to the oven for 25 minutes, until golden brown on top.

4. While the crumble bakes, make your custard. Warm the milk and cream in the saucepan, until small bubbles start to appear at the sides of the pan. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla together until light, and then pour the warm milk over them, whisking constantly.

5. Pour the custard back into the washed out pan, and stir over a low heat for at least fifteen minutes, until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.

6. Serve big spoonfuls of crumble with a generous pour of custard. Any leftovers are delicious cold for breakfast.

Peanut Butter Cookies. Postcards from the Edge.

Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland.

Postcards from the Edge, Carrie Fisher

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My grandmother had a collection of jars that lived on the top of her fridge. During the school holidays, we’d spend days with her and my Grandad, swinging around the washing line in the garden, or playing pick-up-sticks on the thickly carpeted living room floor. When my dad showed up to collect us, he’d reach up to the jars, and bring one down to the kitchen bench. Grandma made jam drops, Anzac biscuits, and the most extraordinarily delicious peanut butter biscuits, and he couldn’t visit her house without having one. They remain my favourite to this day.

When I make them now, I still eat them alongside a glass of milk. Adding a little sprinkle of salt feels compulsory (though Grandma wouldn’t have included it); it’s a perfect counterpart to the sweet, caramel, chewiness of the biscuit. I also under-bake mine, so that they remain fudgy in the centre, soft enough that they’d be in danger of sticking together in my Grandma’s jar. But regardless of my little tweaks, they remain a comforting taste of home – one that takes me right back to her kitchen in Alderley. I was desperate for a batch as soon as I read this line, twenty years after I last ate one.

I adore Carrie Fisher. Like so many people, of course, I was introduced to her aged 10, watching her on screen in a long white dress, with her hair twisted like Danish pastries on either side of her head. I loved her humour, and her warmth, and her sarcasm as Princess Leia. As a teenager, I revelled in her portrayal of the ‘rom com best friend’, which had as much to do with her performance as Marie as with Nora Ephron’s superlative script for When Harry Met Sally. In recent years, her pitch-perfect role in Catastrophe (alongside her dog Gary) was a complete joy.

It turns out I have also been enjoying her writing (without knowing it) for years. She put her mark onto so many films in the 90s and 2000s as a script doctor: Hook, Sister Act, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I read her autobiography a little while back, and then found Postcards from the Edge, which she wrote first as a book in 1987, and then as a screenplay for the 1990 film. Featuring a complex mother/daughter relationship, and drawing on her experience of addiction, it’s wry, sardonic, and unflinchingly unromantic. The peanut butter cookies feel, if anything, out of place in the narrative – I’m not convinced Suzanne ever eats them. But they’re there, a little missive from home.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Makes 16

Ingredients
125g butter
125g crunchy peanut butter
100g light brown sugar
75g golden caster sugar
1tsp vanilla
1 egg
200g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Flaky sea salt

Equipment
Mixer or mixing bowl and electric whisk
Baking trays
Greaseproof paper
Fork

1. Beat the butter and peanut butter together until light and creamy. Add the light brown and golden caster sugars and continue beating until they have dissolved into the butter and no longer feel grainy – give them a good few minutes.

2. Add the vanilla and the egg, and beat until combined. The mixture may separate slightly but don’t worry – the flour is going in next.

3. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarb into the mixture, and beat again until combined. Transfer the bowl to the fridge for at least an hour, ideally overnight.

4. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan). Once the dough is chilled and firm, roll it into ping-pong sized balls. Space the dough balls out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, and press them down with a fork to flatten them.

5. Transfer to the oven for 14 minutes. At this stage, the dough will still be soft, but it will continue to harden once out of the oven. If you prefer firmer, crunchier biscuits, leave them in the oven for 16 minutes, until golden brown. Either way, when you pull them out of the oven, sprinkle the tops with flaky sea salt

6. Cool on the tray for five minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack.