Vanilla Cheesecake with Berry Compote

As usual. I was going through the prerecorded TV shows while running like a hamster on the elliptical machine. This recipe from Gordon Ramsay's "The F Word Restaurant" caught my eyes. It looks pretty straight-forward and we happened to have most of the ingredients at home.

The process
I did few things differently from the original recipe:

• Used a rolling pin to crush the cookies instead of a food processor
• Replaced vanilla pod with vanilla extract
• Replaced digestive cookies with graham wafers
• Used only strawberries for the berry compote since we didn't have blueberries
• Used a stand mixer for both whipping the cream and cream cheese mixture. Gordon used a hand mixer for the cream and hand-blended the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon juice. I'm too lazy to dig out the hand mixer from our kitchen.

Things I wish I have done differently:

• Use a food processor to generate finer crumbs
• Use a stainless steel pan instead of nonstick to make caramel. I know the sugar melting point (around 160C/320F) is way below the max temperature a Teflon pan can handle, I still feel uncomfortable to do so.
• I should have dumped out the crumbs instead of letting it sit in the frying pan and cool on the rack. Heat wasn't dissipated fast enough and they were a bit burned.
• Only make the berry compote right before serving, otherwise it discolor.

Results:
We all love the outcome. Baby Martini didn't like the crispy crumbs but she finished the cake in lightening speed. All the ingredients are pretty generic but it's the trial and true formula. I find that the sugar caramelisation before adding butter (for the crisp) and strawberries (for the compote) is a nice touch. So is to deglaze the berry compote with creme de cassis.