Here`s the thing, I love cheesecake. I love the creamy, I love the tangy, I love the zesty. I love it all, I just straight up love cheesecake. Here’s the other thing, I’ve made some bad cheesecakes. Like really bad. Sometimes I blame my oven that ranges from 25-75 degrees hotter all the time but you never quite know how much hotter. Sometimes I blame the weather (even though I’m pretty sure the Vancouver humidity doesn’t effect something that is supposed to be super moist) but most of the time I blame recipes. Why all the bad cheesecake recipes? I don’t understand. But I didn’t give up. I have been relentlessly trying cheesecake recipes for years, and I’ve made a few conclusions.

1. My oven is terrible and I shouldn’t fight it. I make no bake cheesecakes now.

2. I like citrus with or in my cheesecakes.

3. I like it when there is more then one kind of cheese in the cakes, like ricotta or mascrapone.

So I think I’ve done well here friends. Its no bake, its ricotta and it has a blood orange glaze on top that makes you look like an all star baker. Seriously. Its a variation on a Martha Stewart but I found her recipe to be too firm, so i took out some gelatin, added in more vanilla, and used candied kumquats instead of the blood orange in the centre mostly because I had kumquats but also because I thought that it would be really had to cut the blood orange one. So here we go, I won”t say its perfect but its as close as I’ve come to it in the world of cheesecakes.

4 tbsp Butter, melted

7 graham crackers crushed

3 quarters cup sugar

4 large egg yolks

2 tsp Gelatin

2 cups Ricotta Cheese

3 tbsp Lemon Juice

Zest of 1 Lemon

Zest of 1 Orange

2 tsp Vanilla

half cup Milk

4 oz Cream Cheese

half cup heavy cream, whipped

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix half the butter with the graham crackers

and press into the bottom of a 6 inch spring form pan

Bake for 10 minutes

Sprinkle gelatin over lemon juice and let soften In a small saucepan stir sugar into egg yolks, add in milk and zest.

Cook over low heat until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. It should not boil at any point.

Add in the gelatin lemon mixture and stir until it has dissolved completely.

Add Vanilla.

In a food processor pulse ricotta until smooth.

Add cream cheese and combine again. Add the custard until it has just combined. Fold in the whip cream. Pour into your pan and allow to set in the fridge, at least an hour.