Mascarpone Cheesecake Tart with Summer Berries, Rose and Mint – Beragampengetahuan

This recipe for a rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint will make you the easiest no bake cheesecake made with cream cheese and mascarpone, flavoured with rose for a taste of the Middle East, topped with mixed berries — summer berries or winter berries, depending where you are — and garnished with fresh mint. Make this showstopper the centrepiece of the table. I guarantee it will brighten any day.

Looking for an impressive but easy dessert to make for a shared family meal or casual gathering? Try my rose mascarpone cheesecake tart recipe for the easiest no bake cheesecake made with cream cheese and mascarpone, mixed berries and fresh mint. This endearingly old-fashioned cheesecake is not only gorgeous to look at, it tastes divine — especially if, like me, you’re not a fan of sickly-sweet cheesecakes.

This cheesecake tart is just a vehicle — it’s all about the berries — so buy the best quality fruit you can find (and afford) and be generous. Serve with dishes of double cream or whipped cream, a shaker of icing sugar (with fine holes, or provide a small sieve or sifter on the table for guests), and a bowl of fresh mint leaves — and/or candied rose petals if you can source them (or have time to make them).

Having said that, this cheesecake tart is endlessly adaptable: make a cake instead of tart if feeding a crowd, flavour with jasmine instead of rose (or go classic vanilla), top with a mix of citrus segments in winter (sub rose for lemon curd), stone fruit in summer (stir apricot jam into the creamy filling), or mango, pineapple and passionfruit for a taste of the tropics (add coconut to the mix). The simple base is made from an historic recipe. Really tight on time? Use a store-bought base.

Before I tell you about this mascarpone cheesecake tart recipe, I have a favour to ask. beragampengetahuan is reader-supported. If you’ve made and enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting beragampengetahuan by supporting our Cambodian cookbook and culinary history project on Patreon; or buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; booking a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith when you travel; or buying something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks.

Looking for more cooking inspiration? We’ve got hundreds of recipes in our archives from around the world from places we’ve lived, worked, travelled, and loved. And you can save your favourite recipes in a private account by clicking on the heart on the right of any post. Now let me tell you all about my recipe for rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint.

Rose Mascarpone Cheesecake Tart Recipe with Mixed Berries and Fresh Mint

I’ve been meaning to share this recipe with you all for well over a month now, but life got in the way. I made this rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint for mum’s birthday in May, on Mother’s Day. We savoured it over a handful of meals and each time I cut slices of this beauty, she brightened up increasingly depressing days. Yes, that means I’m still in Australia, dealing with mum’s health issues and housing insecurity during a nationwide rental crisis.

I began experimenting with no-bake cheesecakes over a year ago, for the first birthday I celebrated with Mum in many years. Mum and I have always loved cheesecakes, my grandmothers made cheesecakes, and Mum and I had been having cheesecake cravings, so I decided to make a cheesecake instead of baked cake for her birthday. But I couldn’t find a recipe that met my brief, so my goal was to develop the easiest no-bake cheesecake tart recipe that was also versatile. This is it.

As regular readers know, in the 15 years since we started beragampengetahuan, Terence and I have mainly shared savoury recipes here. On our yearlong global grand tour dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel that launched beragampengetahuan, I think we only shared two recipes for sweets during the entire 12-month trip: chef Jordi Artal’s Catalan chocolate after-school snack and Terence’s chocolate lava cake from Costa Rica. (I’ll double-check that…)

Since then, if we’ve posted sweets recipes, they’re usually been one of my Russian-Ukrainian family recipes or desserts that Terence and I have loved from places we’ve lived and travelled that we’ve really wanted to share because we have a connection to those dishes. These Asian sweets recipes from Southeast Asia, our adopted home since 2011, is the best example of those; this Scottish cranachan recipe is another.

When it comes to desserts, our thinking has long been that there are so many sweets recipes out there, we need to have a good reason to add more dessert recipes here. And that’s why I’m sharing this no bake mascarpone cheesecake tart recipe. I’d wanted a quick and easy homemade cake for Mum’s birthday but I couldn’t find a recipe that fit my own self-imposed brief. If I was finding it challenging, I figured some of you must, too. So what was my brief?

I wanted a stunning homemade cake for Mum’s birthday, but I was cooking up a feast of Russian-Ukrainian family dishes, and didn’t want to add a baked cake to my to-do list. The spring weather was still warmish; another reason not to bake. Berries were in abundance and super-affordable and I had punnets of them in the fridge. Mum and I loved cheesecakes and we’d had cravings. That meant I needed a recipe for an easy no-bake cheesecake I could top with berries.

Both my grandmothers made cheesecakes when I was a child growing up in Sydney. Mum’s mother, my baboushka, made a traditional Russian baked cheesecake with raisins and ‘tvorog’ (farmer’s cheese) called tvorog zapekanka, which we actually ate for breakfast rather than dessert. But, as I said, I didn’t want to bake a cheesecake when I had so much other cooking to do. I’ve since made baba’s recipe and it’s easy and it’s wonderful; I’ll share that with you here another day.

My nanna made the kind of old-fashioned cream cheese-based cheesecake that’s become an Australian classic, so much so that most of the supermarket cheesecakes are in that style. I actually bought one of the most iconic Australian cheesecake brands — it was the first time I’d tasted it in many years and found it sickly sweet. We threw out half of the thing. That was the problem with a few recipes I tested. My mother agreed.

Our preference is always for sour over sweet. I dramatically reduced my sugar intake when I returned to Australia, cutting out sugar in tea and coffee, and leaving it out of recipes whenever possible. I rarely eat sweets. I prefer sour cream to single cream or pouring cream, and I never add sugar to whipped cream, as I prefer the flavour of pure cream (I’m the granddaughter of dairy farmers, after all.) So if you like a sweet cheesecake, you’ll want to add sugar.

And as for vanilla, another classic cheesecake ingredient alongside sugar, I went for a floral flavour instead with rose essence — again with my mother in mind. I introduced Mum to rose syrup (along with cardamom flavoured condensed milk) when she and Dad visited us when we lived in Abu Dhabi many years ago. I used it to make rose lemonade, drizzled it onto ice-cream, poured rose syrup into milk, and used it in cocktails. Mum loved the stuff and I sent her home with a bottle.

Although I have to confess that I’ve really been missing the food of the Middle East, a region where Terence and I lived, worked and travelled for almost a decade — hence all the Middle Eastern recipes I’ve shared over the last year — and mum and I had been fondly recalling the rose syrup I used to buy when we lived in Abu Dhabi and would bring back to Australia for her, hence the hint of rose.

Here are some tips to making our recipe for a rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint.

Tips to Making this No-Bake Mascarpone Cheesecake Tart with Rose, Summer Berries and Fresh Mint

This is the easiest no bake cheesecake recipe if you prefer homemade to store-bought, a more elegant tart to a cake, and summer berries are in abundance and affordable where you are — although they’re ‘winter berries’ here in Australia, where berries such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries are still available, as they’re grown all over the country.

I only have a few tips to making this recipe for a rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint, as it couldn’t be easier. Cheesecake recipes appeared in some of Australia’s earliest cookbooks, including The Colonial Cookbook, first published in 1864, right through to Margaret Fulton’s cookbooks and the Women’s Weekly magazines of the 1970s and 1980s.

My grandmothers made cheesecakes without consulting recipes, and, as I discovered, the more cheesecakes I made, the less I needed to look at a recipe, and could substitute and adjust ingredients and measures without impacting the end result. No-bake cheesecakes are far easier to make than baked cheesecakes, so don’t worry.

The Ingredients

Rose syrup would be too much for this cheesecake, as the berries are the star of the show. I’d use a teaspoon of rose syrup if I wasn’t piling berries on top and instead was sprinkling candied rose petals on the cheesecake. But here I use rose essence. If you’ve not used it before, less is more. Trust me on this.

I’ve used strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, as they’re grown all over the country and are available year-round here in Australia, but use whatever fresh fruit that you prefer that’s in season.

And if you’re a lover of summer berries, also see our recipes for French toast with summer berries, which can be made with fresh or frozen berries, and my Ukrainian sweet varenyky with summer berries drizzled with a sweet, syrupy fruit sauce of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries called pyatiminutka (five-minute jam) and dolloped with sour cream.

The Process

I went with a no-bake cheesecake because I wanted a quick and easy cheesecake and so I opted for a cheesecake tart over a larger cake, especially as there are only two of us. I also went with a tart as it’s more elegant than a cake, and means no waste for small eaters, plus there are only two of us. But by all means make a larger cheesecake if you like.

The first thing you need to do is make the cheesecake base: use a blender or food processor to blitz the digestive biscuits into a fine crumb then transfer that to a mixing bowl. Or, do as my grandmothers did, and use a rolling pin to crush the biscuits in a plastic bag.

Melt the butter (in a pan or microwave), pour it into the bowl, and stir it into the crumbs. That’s your biscuit base. Transfer the biscuit base to a non-stick 20cm x 2.5cm fluted quiche tin with removable loose base, press it into the bottom and sides, and slide it into the fridge, or even better, freeze it, for 15 minutes or so.

Next you need to make your cream cheese filling: clean the blender or food processor you used and blend the cream cheese, mascarpone and rose essence until smooth, and use a spatula to evenly spread it around the chilled biscuit base and smooth it out on top.

Lastly, you need to top the cheesecake with the mixed berries (or whatever fruit you choose to you): arrange the berries on top as you like then slide the cheesecake tart into the fridge to chill, preferably overnight or for a minimum of five or six hours to properly set.

When you’re ready to serve your cheesecake, remove the fluted ring and carefully slide the cheesecake onto a serving plate. Arrange the fresh mint leaves on top, slice, and serve.

Rose Mascarpone Cheesecake Tart with Mixed Berries and Fresh Mint

Rose Mascarpone Cheesecake Tart Recipe with Summer Berries and Fresh Mint

AuthorLara Dunston

This recipe for a rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with summer berries and fresh mint makes an easy no bake cheesecake made with cream cheese and mascarpone, flavoured with rose for a taste of the Middle East, topped with summer berries — or winter berries, depending where you are — and garnished with fresh mint. A tart is more elegant than a cake and means no waste for small eaters.

Prep Time 30 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Course dessert, sweets

Cuisine Australian

Servings made with recipeServings 8

Calories 460 kcal

• 185 g digestive biscuits – processed into fine crumbs
• 90 g unsalted butter
• 250 g cream cheese – room temperature
• 250 g mascarpone cheese – room temperature
• 4 drops rose essence – or 0.05ml, or to taste
• 125 g strawberries – washed and dried
• 125 g blueberries – washed and dried
• 125 g blackberries – washed and dried
• 125 g raspberries – washed and dried
• 16 fresh mint leaves – or as many as you like

• Using a blender or food processor, blitz the digestive biscuits into a fine crumb then transfer them into a mixing bowl. Or you could use a rolling pin to crush the biscuits in a plastic bag.

• In a microwave or pan over low heat, melt the butter, pour it into the bowl and stir it into the biscuit crumbs to combine well.

• Transfer the biscuit base to a non-stick 20cm x 2.5cm fluted quiche tin with removable loose base, press it into the bottom and sides, and freeze for 15 minutes or so.

• Clean the blender or food processor, blend the cream cheese, mascarpone and rose essence until smooth, then use a spatula to evenly spread it around the chilled biscuit base and smooth it out on top.

• Arrange the berries on top as you like, slide the tart into the fridge and chill, preferably overnight or for a minimum of five or six hours to properly set

• When ready to serve, remove the fluted ring and carefully slide the cheesecake onto a serving plate. Arrange the fresh mint leaves on top, slice, and serve.

Calories: 460kcalCarbohydrates: 27gProtein: 6gFat: 37gSaturated Fat: 21gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2gMonounsaturated Fat: 6gTrans Fat: 0.4gCholesterol: 87mgSodium: 237mgPotassium: 179mgFiber: 3gSugar: 11gVitamin A: 1273IUVitamin C: 19mgCalcium: 111mgIron: 1mg

Please do let us know in the comments below if you make my recipe for a rose mascarpone cheesecake tart with mixed berries and fresh mint, as we’d love to hear how it turns out for you.