Ingredients 

Cheesecake

•    4 eggs
•    200 g sour cream
•    800 g natural cream cheese
•    100g butter
•    250 g speculoos cookies
•    1 jar (720 g) sour cherries (drained weight approx. 350 g)
•    800 ml mulled wine
•    1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
•    1 packet of vanilla pudding powder or 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
•    150g powdered sugar
•    Pulp of 1 vanilla bean
•    1 untreated lemon
•    1 packet (13.5g) Agar-Aga

Decoration

•    Seeds of 1/2 pomegranate
•    fresh fruit, e.g. cherries or red berries
•    Speculoos or cinnamon stars
•    Star anise
•    Cinnamon sticks

Preparation

Bring eggs, sour cream and cream cheese to room temperature. Line the bottom of a springform pan (Ø 26 cm), completely with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 160 °C top and bottom heat (140 °C fan).

For the base, melt the butter in a small saucepan, e.g. ZWILLING Vitality. Break the speculoos biscuits into pieces and blend them into crumbs in the ZWILLING ENFINIGY high-performance blender with the pulse function. Remove from the oven and mix with the melted butter. Spread the crumb mixture evenly on the bottom of the prepared baking pan, press down and then chill.

For the filling, drain the sour cherries well. Mix the pudding powder or cornstarch in approx. 50 ml of mulled wine. Bring 250 ml of mulled wine with cinnamon powder to the boil in a saucepan, e.g. ZWILLING Vitality. Remove from the heat, stir in the starch mixture and bring to the boil again while stirring for about 1 minute remove completely from the heat. Fold in the cherries, let the mixture cool slightly and spread on the cold speculoos base, leaving at least 2 cm free towards the edges.

For the cheese mixture, add eggs, sour cream, cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla pulp to the cleaned container of the blender. Rinse the lemon with hot water, dry well and grate some of the zest directly into the container, e.g. with the ZWILLING Z-Cut mini grater. Then squeeze out the juice from one half and pour it into the container as well. Mix the cream cheese mixture with the "Ice Cream" program and then spread evenly over the cherry mixture. Tap the mould a few times on the work surface so that the air bubbles come to the surface.

Bring water to a boil in the ZWILLING ENFINIGY kettle. Place a baking dish, e.g. of STAUB, on the bottom of the oven and pour the hot water into it so that the dish is about half full. Then place the cake pan on the rack in the oven and bake the cake for about 75-80 minutes.

At the end of the baking time, let the cake cool completely in the oven with the oven door slightly open. Leave the cake in the pan and chill for at least 3 hours.
For the mulled wine glaze, put the remaining mulled wine together with the agar-agar in a small saucepan, e.g. ZWILLING Vitality, and bring to a boil according to the instructions on the package. Let the mixture cool down a bit (Attention! Agar-agar gelled at approx. 37 °C) and pour as a mirror onto the cooled cheesecake in the springform pan. Chill again for about 1 hour. Shortly before serving, decorate the cake decoratively for Christmas.

Tip

If you want to make the cake without alcohol, you can collect the cherry juice and use it to prepare the cherry compote. Simply flavour with 1 tsp mulled wine spice. Red grape juice can be used for the mulled wine mirror, which can also be refined with 1 teaspoon of mulled wine spice.

Info

The water and the resulting moisture in the oven prevent the cheesecake from cracking.