Lemon Curd Marbled Cheese Cake

I love the lemon tree in my garden, especially when it's full of lemons. She (yes, she!) was planted by my grandfather in 1931, so the grand old dame is celebrating her 80th birthday this year. Her trunk is gnarled with age but Mrs Taango – that's what we call her because: lemon → tang → Taango – still produces a load of fruits every year.

Mrs Taango is so pretty I never get tired of looking at her. I love the bunches of yellow lemons hanging against the white-washed stone walls, and the kitchen door which is bright blue – the exact same shade of blue as the cloudless Mediterranean sky . . . .

'Hello? Hello? Earth to KT! Earth calling . . . KT!'

THUD! (Sound of KT landing back on earth.)

Huh? What? Oh shucks! I'm not in the Mediterranean! I don't have a garden. I don't have any 80-year-old lemon tree. I get my lemons from a crummy supermarket.
Oh no! N₀oOo₀oO . . . !

But there is hope yet. Maybe the Greek or Italian economy will fall into a big, black hole, bigger and blacker than the one they're in now, and someone out there will sell his lemon orchard cheap . . . with a nice house thrown in . . . blue door optional!

*sigh*

Vewy depwessed . . . . I need something to cheer me up. Let me eat cake or, better still, let me eat cheesecake. And it has to be lemon, my favourite flavour for cheesecake because it's the perfect foil for cream cheese. One's tart; the other's rich – a great combination for food (and sometimes people too).

*munch munch munch, chomp chomp*

Rrrrr . . . . Whoa, my brain is whirring away with the cheesecake as fuel. You know what? If the earth opened up and swallowed the euro, that'd work too. Everything in ex-Euroland will go for a song, and I'll get all the lemon trees I want, plus a few olive orchards, and a house mansion with an infinity pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea . . . .

*sigh*

More cheesecake, please!

LEMON CURD MARBLED CHEESECAKE Source: Maggie Ruggiero, Gourmet, July 2006 (Recipe for one 9- to 9½-inch cake; serves 10) Click here for the recipe. The cake should be baked for about 60 minutes instead of the recipe's guide for 45 minutes. A water-bath and cooling the cake in the oven would help prevent cracks. The original recipe is rather rich for my Chinese palate, so I make a lighter (but still rich) version. Here's what I do: Reduce the lemon curd recipe by 1 egg and 1 tbsp butter, and add ½ tsp cornflour so that the curd still thickens well with less eggs and butter. Replace the sour cream (35% fat) in the filling with thick set natural yogurt (3% fat), drained to make it thicker and less sour.