FOOD FUN: Tomato Cheesecake & More Sweet Tomato Dessert Recipes

[1] Tomato cheesecake, a sweet dessert (photos #1, #2 and #3 © Italian Association of Canned Tomatoes Producers).

[2] A close up of the slice of tomato cheesecake.

[3] Canned tomatoes from Italy (we use San Marzano, as does this recipe).

[4] Green Tomato Crumble Pie. Here’s the recipe from Healing Tomato (photo © Healing Tomato).

[5] Tomato sorbet. Here’s the recipe from Andrew Zimmern (photo © Andrew Zimmern).

[6] Tomato soup cupcakes. Here’s the recipe from Country Cleaver (photo © Country Cleaver).

Now that the crop of local summer tomatoes has faded for most of us, we turn our thoughts to canned tomatoes.

The “usual suspects” for these bright red conserved tomatoes include chili, pasta sauce, shakshuka or Spanish omelet, and Sloppy Joes (add your favorites to the list).

But how about tomatoes for dessert? From ice cream and sorbet to cakes and pies, we have a stack of recipes below for sweet tomato desserts.

We’ll start here with this recipe for a charming Tomato Cheesecake, a visual beauty that will also have your family and friends say “tomato what?” when you present it.

You can remind them that the tomato is a fruit, and its natural sugar levels can easily be enhanced into sweetened tomato condiments like chili sauce, conserve and jam and that classic American sweet sauce, ketchup.

Tomato gelato, granita and sorbetto can be widely found in Italy (recipes below), and are included in the recipes below.
 
 
RECIPE: TOMATO CHEESECAKE

This scrumptious recipe was sent to us by the Italian Association of Canned Tomato Producers, a trade association that represents Europe’s finest canned tomato producers, their fruits grown under the Mediterranean sun of Italy.

Ingredients For 6 Servings

In Europe, “biscuit” is the word for a plain cookie in the U.K., like the rectangular biscuits served with tea.

You can substitute digestive biscuits, English tea biscuits, graham crackers or shortbread for the biscuits referred to below. Just don’t use American biscuit dough: It’s a different item entirely.

And while the Social Tea Biscuits made by Nabisco are derivative of English tea biscuits, they don’t make a good crust.

Ready to roll? Cook and bake time is 1 hour 30 minutes.

Note that the tomato jam is slow-cooked for 10 hours. You can make it the day before.
 
For The Biscuit Base

 
For The Filling

 
For The Topping

 
For The Tomato Jam

 
 
Preparation

1. MAKE the biscuit base. the butter with the basil. Then crumble the biscuits and add them to the butter and spread the mixture into a cake tin and leave to solidify.

2. MAKE the filling. Whip the egg yolks with the sugar and a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil. Whisk the ricotta and add it to the yolks.

3. PLACE the filling on the base and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F for about 20 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool and proceed with the tomato topping.

4. MAKE the topping. Finely dice the celery and add the tomato passata; cook for 8 minutes. Strain the liquid from the pot (you can keep it for another purpose) and add the water, sugar, salt and gelatin. Boil for a few minutes and then sieve the topping onto the cheesecake and let it cool.

5. MAKE the jam. Put all the ingredients into a baking dish, cover with parchment paper and cook at 210°F for at least 10 hours, thus obtaining tomato jam.
 
 
MORE TOMATO DESSERTS

There are easy ways to have tomatoes for dessert. Cherry tomatoes, sweet to begin with, fit right in.

 
 
THE HISTORY OF TOMATOES

THE HISTORY OF SAN MARZANO TOMATOES