Raspberry cheesecake in a mug

I recently found out it's possible to make a cheesecake in ~10 minutes with only four things to clean and not much to throw out - a pretty good combination!

This is mostly a note for my future self to remember how to do this, but it might be of interest to anyone who (a) likes cheesecake, and (b) likes quick and simple cooking - which is most people, right? I had bookmarked a recipe a few years ago for microwave mug cheesecake, but I didn't have a microwave at the time (whoops...) - having moved recently I now have access to said equipment so decided to give it a go for a mother's-day dessert.

Step 0: Prepare

Above is all you need, really! Full list:

• 1 egg white
• 125g cream cheese (exactly half the tub above)
• ~60ml sour cream (not sure exactly, I used ~a third of the tub, about three tablespoons)
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 5 teaspoons of raspberry pulp/jam (either pre-pulped, or mash it yourself).  
• 1 biscuit (Butternut snap is perfect if you can get it)

There's lots of room for adding stuff, so I'll put optional ingredients in the text, but the above is fine. For the non-edible stuff you'll use:

• teaspoon, fork and bowl (for mixing)
• microwave-safe mug (for...holding).

Step 1: Mix

Separate the egg white into the bowl (or using a plastic bottle apparently!...but that's too messy), add the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar and 3 teaspoons of raspberry. You can optionally add a few more flavours here, e.g. I added a few drops of vanilla essence, and stuff like lemon juice or spices may work too, whatever should be mixed through the whole cake.

Whisk it manually with the fork until it's all mixed and there aren't big lumps (as seen above) - this took me a bit over 5 minutes. You can use an actual manual or electronic whisk, but again, that's more to clean, and a fork is fine if you don't care about it being perfectly smooth... You can  also taste it at this point, to see if the sugar level is right, and modify it based on how sweet your tooth is.

Step 2: Microwave

Pour the mixture into the mug. Hopefully it fits :) If not, you need bigger mugs... The actual cooking is in two parts, stirring once in between to make sure the heat is distributed. With my microwave at 750w, I did it for 1 minute first (left photo for proof), then stirred the gloop around, then put it in for a final 30s. The cake itself should look like the photo on the right after both the first and second zap - wobbly like jelly but a bit more solid and textured. Essentially: if it's still liquid, do it longer, if it's completely solid (baked-cheesecake style), bad luck, that's too much. I'll let you extrapolate what to do for different wattage or number of mugs, just use cooking/physics/maths to find the correct scaling factor... 

Step 3: Wait

That's it - you made a cheesecake in 10 minutes! Don't eat it now though - it's still warm. It needs to cool, and set into the right wobbly, mousse-y texture, before it'll taste right. As I found in the first failed attempt: warm cheesecake is pretty horrid. The second attempt worked after ~30 mins in a freezer if you need it fast, but an hour or so in a fridge should also do, and the one in the photos was overnight.

Step 4: Present

I'm repeating the original picture here just to explain what happens at the end - this is where the biscuit comes in. Crush it (on the benchtop, inside a sandwich bag is recommend to avoid spillage) and the put it on the top; this replicates the normal cheesecake base, and should be crunchy and sweet(ish), plus buttery if possible. Add the remaining raspberry, and at this point I added an optional bit of grated chocolate (for mother's day flair - I'd skip this normally).

That's the whole thing - enjoy! All that needs cleaning now is a bowl, a fork, a spoon, and your mug. Plus, there's not much food waste - I got rid of the egg yolk, but everything else went to other meals (more cheesecakes, mostly...). I definitely plan to keep trying these out if my waistline is ok with that - e.g. replace raspberry with coffee/chocolate, and making it in a transparent mug for a cappuccino cheesecake should be awesome.