Runny cheesecake! Help

[agcadmore56]

Hi there
ive made a roasted strawberry cheesecake several times and it’s always been a winner! However this time my friend asked me to make a large one for her daughter’s birthday as a cake. So I bought a supersized rectangular cake tin to do this. I also bought ricotta cheese rather than mascarpone because the cheesecake I’m making is much bigger I would need loads more tubs and ricotta is much cheaper! However, I’ve mixed the ricotta with some icing sugar and it’s runny! Doesn’t matter how much icing sugar I add, it’s still runny! I don’t want to add the double cream and the roasted strawberries in case it’s beyond repair. Is there anything I can do to the ricotta mix to save it or will it just firm up in the fridge?! Help!

Is it a no bake cheescake?
I usually use philadelphia type cream cheese in mine and whip the cream first before mixing through the cream cheese/icing sugar mix

That’s what I’ve done. The double cream is whipped in a separate bowl. I’ve whisked the ricotta and icing sugar in a separate bowl and that’s gone runny. Haven’t yet combined the two.

And sorry yes it’s a no bake cheesecake.

Maybe add some cream cheese to the ricotta mix as googling suggests a mix of the 2 works better than ricotta alone

Add some gelatine.

I’d chuck the ricotta and go and get mascarpone. Ask your friend for a contribution for ingredients?

Ricotta has a significantly lower fat content than mascarpone (10% vs 70%) so the higher water content, combined with the sugar, is going to make it much, much runnier. It’s not going to set the same way. You could maybe blend cream cheese and mascarpone to reduce the cost? But it comes down to chemistry in the end - using ricotta means it won’t taste the same anyway.

Thanks everyone. Off to buy mascarpone!

I did some google digging a while back when I couldn't get my cream cheese frosting to work, and went down a whole rabbit hole about how sugar is hygroscopic, so draws the water out of the cream cheese, making it runny. And because EU cream cheese has a higher water content than US cream cheese to make it spreadable, it goes even runnier. So the more water there is in the base cheese, the runnier it'll be when you add sugar - hence mascarpone remains more solid than ricotta.