This week is Cheesecake Week on Double the Sugar! We’ll be posting every day with a recipe or a review or just some cheesecake related tips. Let us know how we’re doing in the comments section and cheer us on as we, and our other halves, become increasingly full of cheesecake related goodies!

I hope you’re not horribly disapointed that the first cheesecake of the week is a savoury one. I just like to keep you guessing folks!

There’s a show in the UK called Come Dine With Me. It is wonderful telelvision. It is also probably very cheap to make and has become hugely popular thanks to the fact that it’s always fun to laugh at other people. The basic premise of the show is that four or five strangers from the same town take it in turns to throw a dinner party for each other. At the end of the night they score each other out of ten. At the end of the week the person with the highest score wins. Cue lots of complaints, awful scoring, moaning behind people’s backs and fake friendliness. So always a good laugh.

I shouldn’t mock as much as I do though because I use it as a kind of inspiration. For example, I’ve learnt not to drink so much at my own dinner party that I have to go and lie down, leaving the guests to fend for themselves. I’ve also learnt that starting any conversation with “what is up with the jar of cut hair in your bedroom?” is going to make everybody at the table, and watching on their sofas, feel quite sick. The best thing that I’ve taken from the show is this recipe for savoury cheesecake. As a bit of a cheese fiend I was instantly intrigued. And as I always keep at least four types of cheese in the fridge at all times (what if there was a fondue emergency?) I set to making one within 5 minutes of the episode finishing.

And that turned out to be a great call, not least because it provides me with a failsafe lunchtime meal.

Ingredients

• 3 slices of bread
• 240g cream cheese
• 150g assorted cheeses (see below for help with your cheese choices)
• 4 eggs
• 60g self-raising flour
• herbs of your choice

Heat the oven to 140 degrees centigrade.

Make breadcrumbs from the bread, either finely in a food processor or roughly with your hands.

Use butter to coat the sides of a tin, a springform tin or one with a removable base is best so you can remove the cheesecake with ease later. Add the breadcrumbs to the tin and make sure they coat the sides, using the butter to ensure they stick.

Beat together the cheeses. You can use pretty much any type of cheese: soft cheeses are nice and easy to stir in, as are hard cheeses that can be grated. However, if you want to use brie or camembert, something that’s too firm to whisk but too soft to grate, never fear – I’ve experimented with these for you all. Best thing to do is to cut off the rind and cut the cheese into really tiny pieces which can then be added to the beaten mix of other cheeses. In this cake I used a garlic cream cheese, grated parmesan and camembert.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Sieve the flour into the bowl and add the chopped up herbs. Thyme works great with cheese but really you can use whatever you have to hand and love, dried or fresh.

Pour the mix into your prepared tin and cook for about 45 minutes until the cake is still soft but a knife comes out reasonable clean. It should be soft and a bit squidgy in the middle but the outside where the breadcrumbs are should be a wee bit crisper and firmer.

The end result is similar to a quiche but with a firmer texture, more like a cake in fact. You can cut a cake this size into about 8 slices which work as a starter or as a nice lunch. I also have it in my head to make this in a square tin and cut it into small appetizer sized chunks for a party, with or without a cocktail stick attached. Great with the carrot, parsnip and tuna salad elsewhere on the blog and salads in general.