Red White and Blue Pieday

I haven't updated very often in the last week I'm afraid.
Unfortunately the chickenpox reared its ugly head once more and the time I might have spent writing in this blog was instead spent tending to a very spotty, very sad baby.
 Have no fear however: it would take more than the spotty pox to defeat Pieday.

We didn't intend to make a red, white and blue pie this week: it just sort of happened, perhaps the royal jubilee had infected my subconscious or maybe the shops had just stocked so much red and blue fruit for jubilee cookery that we didn't have any choice.
 This, like last week's pie, started out as a Nigella Lawson recipe.
Then I fiddled with it.
This recipe is much simpler than the original, and doesn't require food processors, it also requires a lot less precision: just adjust as you go along to suit your ingredients.

Cheesecake Pie


Ingredients

One small packet of digestive biscuits
One packet of ginger nuts
Soft cheese (about one-and-a-third tubs of Philadelphia seemed to work here)
One block of butter
One jar of lemon curd
Two punnets of soft fruit, more if you want.

First melt about a third of the butter.
The easiest way is to put it into a bowl, then place that bowl inside another bowl which is half-full of hot water.
You may or may not need more butter than this, so leave the rest out, just in case.

While the butter is melting, smash up the digestive biscuits.
We put them, a few at a time, into a jug, then hit them with a rolling pin.
However you do it you should end up with fine crumbs

Then take about a quarter of the packet of ginger nuts (more if it's a small packet) and crush them too.
Mix the crumbs together in a bowl.

Now pour in the melted butter and mix thoroughly.
 You should find that the crumbs are thoroughly coated and can be squished together, if some are still dry then melt a little more butter and stir it in.

Now take a deepish cake tin, pie tin, quiche tin, or whatever you have available*, and start pressing the crumb mixture into the base and up around the sides till you have a firm, if slightly crumbly, shell.
 This is your cheesecake pie-crust.
Put the whole thing into the fridge for an hour or two.

Meanwhile make yourself a cup of tea** and investigate the possibilities of the leftover ginger nuts.

Once the shell has set firm you are ready to make the filling.

Mix the cream cheese and the lemon curd, using more or less cheese or curd according to your taste, the size of the pie you have to fill, and the amount of curd available.

Now take the cold pie-shell and dollop in the lemony cheese, spreading it out to fill the bottom of the pie.

Put this to one side and wash the soft fruit gently, hulling any strawberries and cutting any particularly large specimens in half (or into slices if you're using peaches or other larger fruit).

Fill the pie with the fruit, taking care to cover the base evenly, and return it to the fridge for another few hours.

Since there are no ginger nuts left find something else to occupy you for a while.

Finally remove (carefully) from the tin, slice, rejoice, devour.


*We used a springform cake tin which is particularly handy when trying to remove crumbly pies*** like this without breaking them.

** Unless you are too young for tea.
Then don't.

*** Yes it's still a pie.