Rees-Mogg Mimics Trump Attack on Government Institutions. COS AGM. Successful Light Cheesecake Recipe

Light lemon cheesecake, recipe below

Across the Pond, the president's rhetorik continued to rail at the Russia enquiry and the FBI, following the release of the Nunes Memo, claiming the latter totally vindicated him. The Republican Senator John McCain expressed his disapproval of the partisan attacks on the US institutions, saying, "Our nation's elected officials, including the President, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him."

The temptation to criticise governmental institutions has also carried over to the UK, with Jacob Rees-Mogg stated in a radio interview on the BBC Today program that “With the referendum and with the EU, the Treasury has gone back to making forecasts. It was politically advantageous for them in the past. It is the same for them now. So yes, I do think they are fiddling the figures.” He was referring to the economic forecasts leaked in the past few days that suggest that economic growth will be reduced with any Brexit option.

Representatives for the Civil Service are up in arms at the continued attacks on their professional credibility and integrity in providing reports to the government. The UK Civil Service is the permanent bureaucracy of the UK and civil servants are employees of the Crown and not of the British Parliament. Comedy programs such as 'Yes Minister' have lampooned the service as a third force of government that aims to preserve its own status quo. However, it is there to support the government's actions whilst adhering to its code of Honesty, Integrity, Impartiality and Objectivity. Governments from different political directions come and go, the Civil Service remains.

The main event of the day was the Cambridge Open Studios (COS)AGM, where 400+ artists hear from the last years committee about its organisation and promotion of the successful Open Studios last year and elect the committee to do the same or better for the current year. We also had the nitty gritty of key dates where those participating in Open Studios this year had to complete their website entries. I had a short spot under Any Other Business as I've been contracted by the COS committee to research and write the history of the organisation and needed to call for member contributions.

I'd given artist and print maker Alison Hullyer a lift to the AGM at Griton College and out of curiosity, we took a diversion on the way back to have a look at the new Eddington estate being developed between Huntingdon Road and Madingley Road. The primary school and a new Safeways had already been built with the latter open.

Following on from last night's very rich cheese-cake, i was inspired to try and make the lighter cheese cake that I was more familiar with, made by my Freinds Mother Frau Lingnau when we were children. she has sadly long passed away but I found two recipes in different books to adapt. I decided on using a yeast baked base from 'The Best of Baking' and the quark (curd cheese) topping from 'Dr Oetker Backen macht Freude'.

I prepared the yeast dough from 175g plain flour, 1 egg, 6g dried yeast, 3 tablespoons warm milk, 25 g melted butter, 25 g castor sugar and a pinch of salt. I spread this on the base of a deep cake tin with a removable base and biult up a bit of a rim at the edge. I should have greased the tin base and sides beforehand but got distracted!

Leaving te base to rise, I then prepared the topping with the following adapted recipe. I separated 3 eggs into egg yolks and egg white. To 500 g Quark, I added about 120 g castor sugar, 150 ml double cream, 50 ml milk, three egg yolks, grated rind from one lemon, a small teaspoon of vanilla extract and about 15 g cornflour and mixed them all together to form a thick smooth sauce. The three egg whites were whipped into a stiff peaked foam and then spooned into the quark based mix and then gently mixed in with a spoon till evenly distributed.

The final mixture was then poured over the base, filling the deep cake tin to within about a cm of the top rim. the tin was placed into the oven and baked at 180 deg C for 70 minutes in a fan assisted oven. 

Checking progress after half an hour the mixture had risen about a centimeter above the cake rim. When I returned after 70 minutes, there was a faint whiff of charring in the air and the filling had risen to more than 5 cm  above the cake tin rim and almost touching the top of the oven, close to the heating element! I tested the cake with a skewer to ensure that the topping had set, took it out and then carefully separated the mix from the tin sides with a knife. The cake was removed and placed on a cake plate to cool.

Two hours later, the cake had evenly reduced in height to give a filling of about 5 cm height that cut smoothly revealing a beautiful creamy golden interior. It tasted light and divine!