Russian cheesecake

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C. Grease the springform tin with butter and dust with flour.
2. To make the base, put the cold cubed butter, sugar and egg into the blender jug. Mix the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder together, sieve it over the butter and sugar mixture, and, with the measuring beaker in place, knead with the knead button. If the mixture is too dry, add 1 tablespoon of cold water and, with the measuring beaker in place, knead it in for 20 seconds/speed setting 4.
3. Dust the worktop with flour and roll out two-thirds of the dough to the size of the springform tin (plus an extra 3 cm for the rim). Line the prepared tin with the dough. Set the remaining dough aside. Clean the blender jug thoroughly.
4. To make the quark filling, put the soft butter in chunks, sugar, vanilla sugar, eggs, quark and custard powder into the blender jug and, with the measuring beaker in place, mix for 2 minutes/speed setting 3. Pour the mixture onto the base. Tear the remaining pastry into pieces and arrange it on top of the quark mixture to form a cow pattern. Bake for 1 hour in the hot oven.
5. When the baking time is up, take out the cheesecake, and leave it to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then carefully remove it from its tin and leave it on a wire rack to cool down completely.

TIPS

If you're making the cheesecake for a special occasion, you could roll out the rest of the pastry and cut out shapes, such as hearts for Valentine’s Day or stars for Christmas.

You could also make the vanilla sugar yourself. You can find a recipe for this in our database.