tart!

Just thought I'd share this as I had no particular expectations that it would work, and it actually turned out quite well.

I'd had a couple of tins of condensed milk in my pantry (I really do have a pantry; it's great) for a while - I bought them after reading that you could turn it into caramel/toffee by heating the whole tin up in a pan of boiling water. There are recipes on the internet (an example is here) which recommend this approach, but I wimped out in the end for two reasons:

• The recommendation is to boil the unopened tin in a large pan of water for 2 hours. I couldn't be bothered to wait that long, especially as there was a recipe on the tin which recommended just heating up the contents of the tin in a saucepan on top of the stove for 5-10 minutes.
• I was mildly concerned (particularly given my chronic absent-mindedness) that I would allow the contents of the pan to boil dry and arrive back in the kitchen just as the tin exploded in a hail of red-hot metal shards and flayed the living flesh from my skull, which I imagine would smart a bit.

Anyway, with that in mind (and feel free to try the tin-boiling thing if you like) here is an approximate recipe:

Dave's Instant Death Caramel Cheesecake

• A 10-inch flan tin (one with a press-out bottom - ooer missus - is good)
• Two 400g tins of condensed milk
• One 250g pot of mascarpone cheese
• Half a bar of chocolate (take your pick; I used Green & Black's milk chocolate, which is great, apart from the temptation to scoff the lot instead of cooking with it)
• One packet of Hob-Nobs
• Ground ginger
• Ground cinnamon
• Butter (200g or so)

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over some boiling water. Melt the butter, crush the biscuits (in a sealable freezer bag with a rolling pin is a good way) and add them to the butter with a good pinch of ginger and cinnamon. Press the resulting goop into the bottom and up the sides of the flan tin, and stick it in the fridge for half an hour or so. Meanwhile....put the condensed milk in a saucepan and heat it for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly (this is very important or it will stick and burn; not quite as bad as having the very flesh stripped from your bones by flaming shrapnel, but not good nonetheless in recipe terms). It will darken a bit and thicken up. At this point dump all the cheese in, take it off the heat and stir like a maniac. Put half of it into the base (which you've gone and fetched from the fridge in the meantime), spread the melted chocolate over the top, then spread the other half over the top. Bung it in the fridge for a couple of hours, and you're done.

A note of caution if you're on some sort of macrobiotic vegan diet - this is one of the sickliest desserts in the world. It's also not recommended if you have a family history of congestive heart disease or angina, as it will scoot over to your aorta and park itself there until you die. In fact I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it to anyone, purely for legal reasons you understand. It is, however, delicious, as long as you don't mind it being the last thing you'll ever eat. Pictures follow.....