Total Art Soul - for artists

The origins of this latest recipe happened by accident two days ago when my father managed to ruin a cake we were baking by opening the oven whilst it was cooking. The resultant mess looked like the aftermath of a meteorite collision, cullinary style. Faced with this we had to cut the majority of the cake away, leaving us with a very sorry 3/4 inch thick cake base.

One of the Muses must have been looking our way. ( the one with the apron and flour up to her elbows, probably) as we managed to turn it into a particularly tasty dessert nonetheless.

So here is a slight variation of a recipe which seemed destined for us Starving Artists, entitled: "Probably the best & cheapest cheesecake ever!!!"

You'll need:

2/3rds of a pack of digestive biscuits (tesco value £0.31 for 400g) *

Roughly 75g butter / margerine plus a little extra for greasing

The zest of that famous  lemon

2 tablespoons of icing sugar

2 pots of cottage cheese (Tesco value £0.55 for 300g)

a round cake / pie tin or anything that sort of size and shape, greased

You'll need to :

Melt the butter over a low heat whilst you crush up the digestive biscuits. Mix the whole lot together and press it into the tin to make the base. Pop this in the fridge to set. Meanwhile put the cottage cheese in the blender and blitz it til its smooth. If you don't have a blender or food processor, chuck it in a sieve and press it through with the back of a spoon. Takes a little longer but works just as well  Add the icing sugar and the lemon zest and mix by hand.

When the base is cool, spoon the cheese onto this and smooth it flat. Pop it back in the fridge for about 30 mins to set. Then take it out and eat it! ( you can share it if you're feeling really generous)

You can put fresh fruit on it, chocolate shavings / powder,  anything you like

*As we said earlier , we used a cake-gone-wrong for our base. We wrote it with a biscuit base as it's traditional and people often have a packet of digestives hanging around. Having said this, there are so many things to use as a base so whatever you've got, if you think it'll work, go for it!   Excuse the picture. Inevitably, the cake didn't last intact for the time it took to go and get the camera, plus, we HAD to make sure it tasted okay before we gave you the recipe, didn't we?

Enjoy folks

Karen & Rich