No bake lemon cheesecake (Mary Berry)
This easy chilled, no bake, Mary Berry lemon cheesecake is a great dessert for kids to help make. They’ll love bashing biscuits to make the base and mixing the light, creamy, lemony filling.
This Mary Berry lemon cheesecake, is the perfect dessert for kids to help make. It’s so easy, and with a beautiful lemony flavour is a great dessert for any dinner party.
I’ve loved no bake lemon cheesecakes since I was small. I’m not exactly sure what the recipe was my Mum used to use, but I’ve think this this recipe for Mary Berry’s American lemon cheesecake comes pretty close. It’s got a delicious biscuity base, with a soft, creamy, but not too rich lemony topping. It’s perfect for when you have guests round, but is so easy, you could just rustle it up for pudding after a family meal (as long as you have long enough for it to set!)
How can kids help make this no bake lemon cheesecake?
Cheesecake is a great dessert for kids to help make and this is no exception. My kids love getting to bash the biscuits to make the base. It’s such a simple job, that even really young children and toddlers can do it.
The topping is also really easy to put together. You simply need to pop everything in a bowl, before mixing it all together. And if you’ve got a lemon juicer, you can get your kids busy squeezing out the lemon juice to add in. Again, these are such simple jobs, with no heat or sharp knives involved, so really young children should be able to help with most of it.
Can you use mascarpone instead of cream cheese in cheesecakes?
Mascarpone and cream cheese look similar and are both white, soft cheeses with a mild taste but they’re not exactly the same. Cream cheese has a slightly more tangy flavour and is made using double cream. Both work well in cheesecakes, in fact, lots of our cheesecake recipes below use mascarpone, but the flavour of the lemon in this cheesecake works well with cream cheese.
How long does it take to set?
No bake cheesecakes take at least 6 hours to set. If you have time, it’s best to make it the day ahead and leave it overnight in the fridge to set.
If it’s not set after 6 hours or so and you can’t wait much longer, pop it in the freezer for around an hour before you serve it.
How long does a cheesecake keep?
You need to store cheesecake covered, and in the fridge. It will keep in the fridge for a few days. I wouldn’t recommend freezing this cheesecake.
Other cheesecake recipes
If you liked this double chocolate cheesecake, you might like some of our other cheesecake recipes:
Baked chocolate ripple cheesecake
Double chocolate cheesecake
Raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake
No bake berry cheesecake
No bake orange cheesecake
Biscoff cheesecake
Millionaire’s cheesecake
Strawberry cheesecake
Banoffee cheesecake
After Eight cheesecake
Maltesers cheesecake
No bake key lime pie
Lemon meringue cheesecake
What else can you make with lemons?
If you liked this lemon cheesecake, you might like some of our other lemon recipes. They’re a great way of using up more lemons if there are a few left over in your pack.
Lemon sponge cake
Mary Berry’s lemon cupcakes
Lemon biscuits
Lemon blueberry loaf
Lemon curd muffins
Lemon meringue cheesecake
Mary Berry’s iced lemon traybake
Lemon curd tarts
Lemon drizzle cupcakes
Individual lemon tartlets
Lemon blueberry muffins
Lemon meringue pie
Useful equipment
You might need the following baking tools/gadgets to make this lemon cheesecake
Digital scales
Sauce pan
Wooden spoons
Freestanding mixer
Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Lemon juicer
Lemon zester
20cm loose bottomed tin
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Difficulty: Easy
Time: 30 minutes + 4 hours chilling
Serves: 12
Ingredients
For the base:
75g (1/3 cup) butter
175g (1 1/4 cups) digestive biscuits
40g (1/8 cup) Demerara sugar
For the topping:
225g (1 cup) full-fat soft cheese
25g (1/8 cup) caster sugar
150ml (2/3 cup) double cream
150ml (1/2 cup) greek yoghurt
Juice of 1 large lemon or 1 1/2 small ones.
50g icing sugar, (to taste)
How to make a no bake lemon cheesecake
Grease a 20cm (8 inch) loose bottomed or spring form cake tin and line the bottom with a circle of baking or parchment paper.
Make the base
Get your toddler to weigh the butter (75g), cut it up a little and put it in a pan. Melt it over a low heat.
While it’s melting, weigh the biscuits (175g) then pop them in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin until they are nice and finely crumbed. You could also crush them in a bowl, but I tend to find it makes a lot less mess doing it in a freezer bag. As well as bashing them, get your kids to roll the rolling pin over the biscuits to get them crushed down nice and small.
Alternatively, you can pop the biscuits in a food processor and blitze them until they are crumbed.
Weigh out the sugar (40g) into a small bowl.
Once the butter has melted, remove it from the heat and stir in the biscuit crumbs and sugar.
Stir everything together until all the biscuits crumbs are coated in the melted butter.
Pour it into your prepared cake tin and press it down firmly. Make sure you work around all the edges, so you get a nice even and firm base. We find the back of a metal spoon is a great tool for this job. Pop the base in the fridge to set while you make the topping.
Make the lemon cheesecake filling
Measure the cream cheese (225g) and sugar (25g) into a bowl and mix well to blend thoroughly.
Measure the cream (150ml) and yoghurt (150ml) in a measuring jug, or if you want to be more accurate use the ml setting on your scales and add them straight into the bowl. Whisk it together so it comes together and is nice and light and fluffy.
Add the lemon
To get the most out of your lemon, pop it in the microwave if you have one for 10 seconds or so, then roll it around on your worktop. This should get it to release more juice.
Cut the lemon in half and get your kids to help squeeze it. Once they’re done, give it one final squeeze to make sure they’ve got all the juice out.
Gradually add the lemon juice, whisking all the time. We used one lemon as it gave us a lot of juice. If your lemon is smaller or doesn’t yield a lot of juice, you could use another one or half of one. We also added 50g of icing sugar to balance the sharpness of the lemon juice. I’d recommend adding a tablespoon of icing sugar, mixing it in, and tasting a little. Add another tablespoon if it needs it.
Pour the mixture into the tin on top of your biscuit crust and chill in the fridge overnight, or for at least 6 hours, to set.
When you’re ready to serve it, run a knife around the edge of the biscuit crust to loosen the cheesecake, then push up the base or remove the sides of the tin and slide the lemon cheesecake on to a serving plate.
Add some fruit or a few dollops of whipped cream to serve.
Lemon cheesecake
Ingredients
For the base:
- 175 g (1 1/4 cup) digestive biscuits
- 75 g (1/3 cup) butter
- 40 g (1/8 cup) Demerara sugar
For the cheesecake topping:
- 225 g (1 cup) full-fat soft cheese
- 25 g (1/8 cup) caster sugar
- 150 ml (2/3 cup) double cream
- 150 ml (1/2 cup) greek yoghurt
- Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
Instructions
Make the base
- Weigh the butter, cut it up a little and put it in a pan. Melt it over a low heat. While it’s melting, weigh the biscuits then pop them in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin. If you need to, you can finish crushing the biscuits in a bowl.
- Weigh out the sugar into a bowl. Once the butter has melted, remove it from the heat and stir in the biscuit crumbs and sugar. Pour it into a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin or spring-form tin press it down firmly and leave to set. We put it in the fridge while we made the topping.
Make the cheesecake filling
- Measure the cheese and sugar into a bowl and mix well to blend thoroughly.
- Measure the cream and yoghurt in a measuring jug, or if you want to be more accurate use the ml setting on your scales and add them straight into the bowl. Mix it all together again. Add the lemon juice.
- Pour the mixture into the tin on top of your biscuit crust and chill in the fridge overnight to set.
- When you’re ready to serve it, run a knife around the edge of the biscuit crust to loosen the cheesecake, then push up the base or remove the sides of the tin and slide the cheese on to a serving plate.
- Add some fruit to serve.
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Similar recipes
If you liked this no bake lemon cheese cake, you might like our white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake, peach trifle, chocolate cheesecake, our pavlova or our other delicious desserts for kids.
This recipe was first published in February 2016, and updated with new pictures in October 2022.
This no-bake lemon cheesecake looks absolutely divine! I love how simple the recipe is, and the kids will have so much fun helping out. Perfect for a summer treat! 🍋✨
This no-bake lemon cheesecake was absolutely delicious! I love how simple the recipe was, the lemon flavor is perfect for a refreshing treat.
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