Mary Berry’s New York cheesecake is a baked cheesecake of full-fat cream cheese, sour cream, vanilla and a tablespoon of flour. The base is digestives crushed with demerara sugar. It bakes at 160°C/140°C fan/Gas 3 for about 40 minutes.
It comes from Mary 90 (2025), where she calls it her version of the classic vanilla baked cheesecake. She singles out the tablespoon of flour, added so the cheesecake sets perfectly. She wants extract or scraped seeds, not essence, which she says is weaker.
Then comes the step people skip. After 40 minutes you turn the oven off and leave the tin inside for two hours, door shut. That’s not resting, it’s still cooking.
Mary Berry New York Cheesecake
Course: DessertCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy8
servings25
minutes40
minutes660
kcalFrom Mary 90 (2025). No water bath, no cornflour and no springform tin wrapped in foil, just a low oven and the patience to leave it alone afterwards. The strawberries go on raw at the very end.
Ingredients
- For the base:
150 g (5 oz) digestive biscuits
25 g (1 oz) demerara sugar
75 g (3 oz) butter
- For the filling:
750 g (1 lb 10 oz) full-fat cream cheese
125 g (4½ oz) caster sugar
1 tbsp plain flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
150 ml (¼ pint) sour cream
2 large eggs, beaten
- To decorate:
150 ml (¼ pint) sour cream
About 150 g (5 oz) strawberries
Directions
- Preheat:Heat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/Gas 3. Line the base of a 20cm (8 in) loose-bottomed springform tin with non-stick baking paper.
- Make the base:Crush the biscuits and demerara sugar finely in a bag with a rolling pin. Melt the butter in a wide-based pan, take it off the heat and stir the crumbs through. Press firmly into the tin with the back of a spoon and chill while you make the filling.
- Make the filling:Mix the cream cheese and caster sugar slowly with an electric hand whisk. Mix in the flour, vanilla and sour cream, then add the beaten eggs slowly, a little at a time, until well combined.
- Bake:Pour the filling over the base and level the surface. Bake for about 40 minutes, then turn the oven off and leave the tin inside for 2 hours to set.
- Cool and chill:Loosen the edges in the tin with a small palette knife, then leave to cool to room temperature. Chill for about 4 hours or overnight.
- Decorate:Turn out onto a serving plate, spread sour cream over the top and arrange the sliced strawberries.
FAQs
Why leave it in the switched-off oven for two hours?
Because it isn’t finished when the timer goes. Berry explains this properly in Cooks the Perfect (2014), where she writes the same cheesecake in an earlier form. She says it will look very soft and wobbly in the centre and slightly puffy at the side when it comes out.
Finishing the cooking slowly in the turned-off oven is what stops it overcooking. She also gives you permission to relax about the surface. A small crack or two may appear as it cools, and it doesn’t matter, because the sour cream goes over the top anyway.
Why does she add flour to a cheesecake?
Her own answer is that it ensures the cheesecake sets perfectly. It’s one tablespoon against 750g of cream cheese, so it isn’t there to thicken the filling so much as to steady it.
She’s consistent about it across the years, which is the useful signal. The 2014 version uses the same single tablespoon of plain flour, against 700g of cream cheese. Ten years of writing this cheesecake and the flour stayed.
How do I stop it cracking?
Three things, and only one of them happens in the oven. The first is not beating too much air in. In Cooks the Perfect she says to take the cream cheese out of the fridge at least 2 hours ahead so it mixes smoothly, and to keep an electric hand whisk on low speed throughout.
The second is settling the filling before it bakes. She tells you to jiggle the tin gently once it’s filled, then burst any bubbles that rise with the back of a teaspoon. The third is loosening the cheesecake from the side of the tin afterwards, which she says helps stop it cracking across the middle.
How is this different from her American-style cheesecake?
Same technique, different dress. The Cooks the Perfect version uses 700g of cream cheese to this one’s 750g. It adds a teaspoon each of grated lemon rind and lemon juice, takes 100ml of soured cream in the filling rather than 150ml, and its base is plain digestives with no demerara.
The topping is where they part company. That one is finished with a cooked blueberry syrup: sugar dissolved in water, bubbled briefly without stirring, then half the berries cooked in it. The rest are stirred through off the heat. The Mary 90 version skips the pan entirely and uses raw sliced strawberries.
Can I make it ahead or freeze it?
Both, and she gives figures for each. Her tip on this recipe is that it can be made up to a day ahead, with the sour cream and strawberries added on the day of serving. Undecorated, she says it freezes well.
She offers four hours or overnight for the chill, and I’d take the overnight option whenever the timing allows. That preference isn’t arbitrary. In the 2014 book she asks for at least 6 hours and preferably overnight, and says plainly that chilling improves the texture.
What if I want a cheesecake without turning the oven on?
Berry has plenty, and she’s deliberate about which method suits which flavour. Her Baileys cheesecake is set cold in the fridge, which keeps the alcohol flavour brighter than baking would.
Baked and chilled are genuinely different desserts rather than shortcuts of each other. This one is dense and sliceable; the fridge-set ones are lighter and closer to a mousse. If you want baked but fruitier, her cherry cheesecake bakes hotter and faster, at 180°C for 25 to 30 minutes.
