Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• Nigella's Chocolate Cheesecake

  Hello, Part of the recipe for the chocolate cheesecake filling is the custard powder. My question is how much custard powder needed? It isn't mentioned in the recipe. Thank you and looking forward to your reply. Kind regards, Arnold Lanse

  I have just received the above recipe, but do not know what "Jackson Pollock" means. Can you advise please. Anssey.

  Posted by arnoldnz. Answered on 25th Oct 2011 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  Nigella's chocolate cheescake uses 1 (15ml) tablespoon of Bird's custard powder. If you can't get custard powder then you could use 1 tablespoon of cornflour (cornstarch) plus 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

  The term "Jackson Pollock" used in the method is to illustrate a way of decorating the cheesecake, rather than being a specific cookery term. Jackson Pollock was an artist who lived in the first half of the 20th Century and was well known for his abstract expressionist art. In particular he developed a form of "drip" painting where the paint is dripped or drizzled over the canvas in a random pattern. For the cheesecake nigella is suggesting that you drip or drizzle the glaze over the cheesecake in a style reminiscent of Jackson Pollock.

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