Cheesecake on a Stick

Preheat the oven to 175 °C fan.

Then it's the base's turn. Put the butter biscuits in a freezer bag and crush them into fine crumbs with the Rolling pin – it's quicker and makes less washing-up than any machine. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan.

Mix the biscuit crumbs with the melted butter, put everything into the Silicone mold and press it flat and evenly with a spoon or fork. Pre-bake the base at 175 °C fan for 10 minutes – that way it stays crisp later and doesn't go soggy under the filling.

One point where there's no "you can also do it differently": you need a Silicone mold. The cheesecake is baked in a water bath, and a Springform pan with a clip fastener isn't watertight.

While the base is in the oven, make the mixture. Put the Philadelphia into a larger Bowl and stir it briefly smooth with the Hand mixer – really just until it's creamy. No longer: the more air gets in now, the greater the risk that the surface cracks later.

Add the granulated sugar and the crème fraîche and briefly mix both in. Then sift in the starch and stir it in with the hand Whisk.

The four eggs go in last, one after the other, and are only folded in – not beaten. Here too the rule is: as little air as possible. That's half the battle for a smooth surface.

Now you get to flavour it: the zest of a fresh organic lemon and a dash of natural extract. The lemon makes the cheesecake fresh, the vanilla rounds it off – together they give exactly the taste you'd expect from a good cheesecake.

Put the finished mixture onto the pre-baked base and spread it evenly. The quantity fits exactly a mold with a 24 cm diameter – for other sizes you can adjust it with the quantity switcher above.

Place the filled Silicone mold into a larger form – a tall square Cake tin, a tray with a high rim or a large casserole dish. Slide it all into the oven together and only then pour hot water into the outer form, up to about halfway up the Silicone mold. That way you don't have to carry a full water bath across the kitchen.

Bake the cheesecake at 175 °C fan for about 45 minutes.

After the 45 minutes, switch off the oven and prop the door open a crack with a wooden spoon. Just leave the cheesecake inside.

That's the second reason the surface stays smooth: the cake cools slowly instead of in a sudden temperature drop. Leave it to stand for an hour.

After the hour, carefully take the cheesecake out of the oven together with the water bath – the water is still hot, and a hasty movement will slosh it into the cake. Then lift the Silicone mold out of the water and leave the cheesecake in it for at least another hour at room temperature.

After that, the cheesecake goes into the fridge together with the Silicone mold for at least 8 hours, ideally overnight.

Only once it's properly cold do you remove it from the mold – and then it comes out all by itself, which is the beauty of silicone. Place it on a platter or a board. Up to this point it's a wonderful classic cheesecake. If you like, you can stop here. We'll keep going.

To make sure all the pieces are the same size, place the cake divider on the cold cheesecake and press it in lightly – the markings are enough to guide you.

Then cut through with a long, smooth knife. Halve it, quarter it, and go on from there; that gives you the straightest cuts. Wipe the blade with kitchen paper between cuts; if you also briefly dip it in hot water and dry it off, you'll get really clean edges.

Pull the pieces slightly apart so you have room all around. Then push a wooden stick into each piece from the wide side – flat and centred, about halfway in. The stick should sit in the biscuit base and in the filling, then it will hold.

And now the most important step of the whole recipe: **put the pieces in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.** A fridge-cold cheesecake is still too soft for the warm icing – frozen, it keeps its shape, the icing sets immediately and stays even.

Melt the Deco melts as directed on the packet: in the microwave in short intervals of 20 to 30 seconds, stirring in between each time, or over a bain-marie. They should be runny but not hot – around 40 °C is enough. If it gets too hot, the mixture turns thick and dull.

Place a Cake rack on a tray with baking paper, which will catch everything that spills over. Lay a frozen piece on the rack and pour the icing over it from the tip so that it runs over the edges. Any excess drips through. Work quickly: on the cold piece the icing sets in seconds.

Do this for each colour: violet, pink, white and dark. That way each piece gets its own look – and together they look like a fan of colours.

**Alternative – method 2: dipping.** Instead of pouring over, you can also dip the pieces into the icing. For this they need to be **frozen right through**, at least one to two hours, and the container has to be deep enough. Dip the piece in by the stick, pull it out slowly and let it drip off briefly. This gives a particularly even coating – but needs considerably more icing. Both ways work; we poured ours over.

As long as the icing hasn't fully set, everything you place on it will hold. After that you'll need a dab of icing as glue.

We combined three things: fine lines in a second colour, drawn with the icing bottle or a small Piping bag. Sugar flowers in white, violet and pink. And a few Sugar pearls for contrast.

Don't hold back – Sprinkles, edible gold leaf, chopped nuts, anything goes. It looks best when each piece is different and yet they all belong to the same family: stick to two or three colours and repeat them.

Let the finished pieces set in the fridge – ten minutes is usually enough. Then take them out about ten minutes before serving: straight from the cold, cheesecake tastes of little, but at a slightly warmed temperature it tastes of everything.

Arranged in a circle on a round platter, with the stems pointing outwards, they look their best. And then you can watch as first the phones come out, and then the hands.