Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake with Mango and Passion Fruit | Bake the Book

Die-hard ricotta cheesecake purists, avert your eyes: this is a cheesecake crafted from Brillat-Savarin cheese, a French triple-crème that's super dense and fatty. It provides an excellent foil for a playful cookie crust and an artfully constructed passion fruit glaze. The entire cake is accompanied by a mango puree, further brightening the flavors and adding even more freshness.

Tips: The main component of this cheesecake, the Brillat-Savarin cheese, comes fresh (non-affine, without a rind), or soft aged, which does have a rind. The photos in the book depict a round of fresh Brillat-Savarin, yet the recipe dictates to "carefully remove the rind" from the cheese. This says to us that either kind of cheese can be used in this recipe, either fresh or soft-aged. In the latter case, just be careful to remove the rind.

If you can't find Brillat-Savarin, you can try a fresh, soft, creamy cheese like mascarpone, but the result will not be quite the same.

Tweaks: When specifying ingredients for the crust, the recipe says "speculoos, gingersnaps, or cinnamon cookies." That selection is a bit broad; if you can, go with speculoos cookies, as they are best suited for the flavors on the plate. Gingersnaps and mango is a bit of a harsh pairing, and can overwhelm passionfruit. Cinnamon cookies would be a good runner-up.

As always with our Bake the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Frenchie to give away.