At the best of times, a cheesecake (or really any item of food) hailing from “Ye Olde Crusty cellar”  would not sound tempting.  However, these are not the best of times, (these may well be the worse of times) and desperate times call for cheesecake!  Have I ever mentioned how much I love cheesecake?  Next to ice cream, it is probably my favourite dessert.  Also, Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week has come around again and I had half a tub of cream cheese icing I wanted to use up. I did not want to make another cake with cream cheese icing so I thought I could hide it in plain sight as it were by mixing it with more cream cheese, sugar and lemon.

(Don’t ask me what look I was going for with the fruit decoration!)

The recipe for Ye Old Crusty Cellar’s Cheesecake came from the book 100 Fabulous Cheesecakes by Ellen Sinclair of The Australian Woman’s Weekly (1971). It is a real shame about the name because the Ye Olde Crusty Cellar cheesecake itself is delicious!!!

Ye Olde Crusty Cheesecake – The Recipe

I did not copy the recipe for Ye Olde Crusty Cellar Cheesecake exactly though.  I changed a few things to suit my personal taste.  You can decide if you make this whether to follow the OG version or mine.  Here is the original with my notes on the crumb crust.

Here are the instructions on what to do with those ingredients to turn them into a crumb crust:

The two changes I made to this were:

• I did not add any additional sugar as I thought an entire can of condensed milk would be sweet enough
• I did not add the egg yolks.  Largely because I could not understand what they were doing there.  I totally understand eggs in a baked cheesecake but not in an unbaked.  The only thing I could think that they provided was maybe an additional richness to the mix.  Again, for my taste, cream cheese and sour cream are rich enough.

I was a bit worried that leaving them out would somehow mean that the cheesecake would not set.  But the mixture firmed up beautifully in the fridge overnight to cream a filling that was both light, luscious and not too sweet!

Ye Olde Crusty Cellar – History

The Ye Olde Crusty Cellar was a wine bar opened at 255 George Street brSydney in 1931 by winemaker Leo Buring.

It was described as having:

“the head of Bacchus…to guide guests in and out’ with ‘shaded lights’ and a feeling of ‘cloistered gloom’.

Hmm, not sure cloistered gloom would be the ambiance I would be seeking were I to open a wine bar. But it worked for Leo!  The “Crusty” was a destination venue, attracting crowds of visitors, many of whom would have sampled the cheesecake!

Sadly the “Crusty” closed in 1974 but luckily the recipe for us, it’s signature cheesecake lives on!

Have a great week everyone!