Cream Cheese Substitute for London Cheesecake

Our answer

Nigella's London Cheesecake (from Domestioc Goddess and on the Nigella website) is a baked cheesecake made with regular/full fat cream cheese. Whilst there are cheesecakes made with ricotta, we would not particularly recommend using it as a substitute for the cream cheese in this cheesecake.

There are two problems. Firstly ricotta is slightly grainy and this will affect the texture of the finished cheesecake. Second ricotta is a low fat cheese with a higher water content than cream cheese and you would probably need to adjust the ratio of eggs to cheese to get the cheesecake to set properly. If you are looking to reduce the fat content then it may be possible to use a reduced fat (in the US Neuchatel) cream cheese, though not a very low fat or non-fat version. However we have not tried this so cannot guarantee the results.