Ginger cheesecake

I have to warn you this is not what we know as cheesecake – which is, apparently an ancient dessert dating back maybe a coupe of thousand years. Most cheesecakes, as you might imagine, contain some sort of dairy product, or something approximating it. In many recipes, curds are used, and latterly cream cheese, or cream…. However in my collection of ninety year-old recipes, cheesecakes are pastry cases with some sort of filling topped with a sort of cake mixture. They sound tasty, but not cheesecakes as we know them!

There’s a whole variety of fillings, apart from the mincemeat one I mentioned the other day:

• apricot
• banana
• fruit and coffee (sounds intriguing!)
• ground rice
• orange
• pineapple ratafia (a popular choice ninety years ago!)
• Seville (sounds delicious)
• spiced
• sponge
• sultana

… and here is ginger –

• ½ – ¾ lb flaky pastry
• 1 oz glacé ginger
• 1 egg and its weight in flour, butter, sugar
• ¼ tsp ground ginger (I’d up that to some degree!!!)
• marmalade

1. roll out pastry, cut into rounds and line a greased bun tin
2. put a spoonful of marmalade in each
3. cream butter and sugar then add egg and beat well
4. add flour and spice and mix well, then stir in chopped glacé ginger
5. spoon over marmalade
6. cook in a hot oven for 15-20 mins until brown
7. dust with icing sugar (the recipe actually says castor sugar but I’d prefer icing!)