Can I Use Light Cream Cheese For The Banoffee Cheesecake?

Our answer

Nigella's Banoffee Cheeesecake (ffrom KITCHEN) has a banana flavoured cheesecake filling that is topped with a toffee sauce. Nigella's cheesecakes use full-fat cream cheese (in the UK also labelled as soft cheese) as it gives the best texture and flavour. For this particular recipe we would prefer to stick with full fat cream cheese as the batter contains pureed banana, which already reduces the overall fat content, and we feel that if light or reduced fat (neufchatel) cream cheese is used then overall the cheesecake may start to taste a little "thin".

We would definitely not use fat-free or very low fat cream cheese for the cheesecake as this could also affect the texture of the cheesecake, particularly due to the amount of water and stabilisers that need to be added to to the cream cheese. And we would also not recommend freezing any cheesecake that has been made with reduced fat or low cream cheese as the higher water content can cause the cheesecake to weep as it thaws.