Today I’m sharing the result of my happy experiment making Guava Cheesecake Bars. Fruit and cheesecakes are old friends; everything from blueberries, raspberries and strawberries to bananas, oranges, lemons, mangoes and kiwi have been incorporated into cheesecakes. In baking, guavas are usually incorporated in the form of jams, jellies or pastes. So I thought, “ Why not use fresh guava?”.
Guava and chilli – naughty but nice
Driving on holiday, I saw cartloads of ripe guavas being sold all along the highway and just had to buy a couple of kilos. These were the white variety, not the pink ones. Although for this recipe of Guava Cheesecake Bars, pink ones will do perfectly as well. They just have to be very ripe. I don’t recommend using overripe fruit that has turned squishy. I was excited to explore cooking with them and making something that I’ve never tried before. The smell of ripe guavas has a strong streak of vanilla. So the idea of combining the sweet-tart, custardy guava pulp with tangy cream cheese seemed like one that would work.
Here, in India we love sprinkling a little salt and chilli powder on sliced guavas and many of us have fond memories of enjoying chilli-spiked guavas from street vendors outside our schools. I wanted to somehow incorporate those flavours because I didn’t want my Guava Cheesecake Bars to have a monotonous sweetness. They needed that extra something to perk them up. Adding a little chilli powder to the guavas did the trick. The kiss of heat made these cheesecake bars a little naughty yet nice.
How to prepare the guavas for the cheesecake
Guavas have seeds, hard, gritty ones that love to get stuck in molars. So, the core of the guavas, which contains the seeds, must be removed before dicing them for cooking. The core is the softest part of a ripe guava and can simply be scooped out with a spoon. The rest of the fruit is cut into small cubes so that they don’t completely disintegrate while cooking.
The cut guavas are cooked with a little lemon juice, salt, sugar, chilli powder and cornflour for a few minutes. They must turn soft but retain their shape somewhat and give up the extra water. The cooked guavas will resemble a mixture of cooked fruit with a thick syrupy coating sauce. This mixture must be dolloped over the cheesecake batter and baked.
A healthier almond flour crust
The base of these Guava Cheesecake Bars is a relatively thin one, made with almond and all-purpose flours, butter and cornflour. Instead of adding melted butter to the flour mixture, in this recipe, we rub cold butter into the mixed flours like we would to make pie crust. This is because if melted butter is added to almond flour, it will combine with the oils in the almonds to make a soft, pasty mixture. Using cold butter yields a nice crumbly mixture which can be patted down into the baking pan and baked to produce a crisp base. You can choose to go with an all flour crust. In that case, add melted butter to the all-purpose flour, mix till combined, press into the pan and bake.
When the cheesecake bars are done, they will have a slight wobble. Don’t worry about this, they will continue to cook and set as they cool. Resist the temptation to dig in. Cool the bars in the pan, remove and cool on a wire rack. Then chill them in the fridge for 3-4 hours before slicing to serve.
Guava Cheesecake Bars
Ingredients
For the cheesecake batter
- 220 g cream cheese at room temperature
- 40 g natural yoghurt, hung and drained or Greek yoghurt
- 50 g sugar
- 1 egg
- ¾ tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
For the guava filling
- 2 large guavas, washed, deseeded and cut into small cubes
- 1 tbsp butter
- ¼ tsp red chilli powder (cayenne)
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- Pinch of salt
For the crust
- 100 g almond flour
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 40 g cold butter, cut into cubes
- 1½ tbsp cornflour
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180℃. Line an 8'x 8" square baking tin with parchment (make sure you leave parchment hanging over the sides to help lift the bars out) and grease with butter.
- Melt the butter in a wide pan and add the guavas, salt, lemon juice and chilli powder. The guavas will give out water. Cook for 5 minutes on medium heat till they're done but still hold their shape. Mix the cornflour in 1 tsp water and pour it into the cooked guavas. Let it thicken the mixture and take it off the heat.
- To make the crust mixture, whisk the almond flour, salt, cornflour (cornstarch) and sugar together in a bowl. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the almond flour till they resemble breadcrumbs.
- Press this mixture evenly into the prepared tin and bake for 15 minutes till lightly golden and crisp.
- While the crust is baking, make the cheesecake batter. Whisk the cream cheese and yoghurt in a bowl till combined. Mix in the sugar and cornflour followed by the egg and vanilla till you have a smooth batter.
- Pour the cheesecake batter on to the just-baked, warm crust, and even out the surface. Dollop the guava filling to cover the surface of the cheesecake. Bake for 40 minutes till the filling is mostly set. It might still have a little wobble in the centre. Switch off the oven, open the door and let the cheesecake cool inside for 20 minutes.
- Remove the tin from the oven and set on a wire rack to cool completely. Once fully cooled, cover and chill the cheesecake for 3-4 hours in the fridge. Then, lift it out using the overhanging parchment and cut into 2"x 2"squares. Store in an airtight box for up to a week in the fridge.
No Comments