Ricotta strawberry cheesecake

I attempted to replicate Mowelicious' ricotta strawberry cheesecake yesterday, and it turned out... not too bad for a first try lah. Here's the final product, looking relatively appetizing, but the texture of cheese portion and cake base still need improvement.

I'm actually not familiar with diff types of cheeses, so I wasn't quite sure what ricotta would taste like. But 'cos Mowelicious made it seem so yummy, thought it couldn't be that bad right. Turns out that ricotta hardly tastes like cheese.. more like cream with mild flavor of cheese... texture-wise, it's soft and also a little grainy/ powdery. Apparently Italians love it and use it for their lasagnas and stuff, but I'm really not quite used to it. Nevertheless, it's lighter than cream cheese and after refrigerating the cake overnight, it seemed relatively firmer and yummier... according to online sources, it's less fatty than cream cheese, so I'd prob consider trying some ricotta recipe again :)

Texture of cheese portion was a little more fluid than it's supposed to be 'cos I was bad at melting gelatine and think ended up putting in a lot less than I was supposed to. Then cake base was erm bit hard cos the clever me forgot to add baking powder bleah....

Fresh cut lime and strawberries for my cheesecake! These days it seems pretty rare to come across an entire box of regularly sized nice strawberries in the supermarts... Perhaps strawberries are all genetically modified now - just cannot avoid getting those contorted-looking giant ones in your box. Some come with scary outgrowths or like a tiny twin... I want my nice triangular shaped ones! (was still somewhat lucky lah and I managed to get decent proportion of nice small ones in the end)

The cake looked somewhat dubious when I first removed it from the baking pan... A white sea of dubious bumps... heh

But the strawberries magically made it look pretty yummy!