The humble cheesecake.
Honestly one of my favourite desserts EVER! I love cheesecake. I like all types of cheesecake, I can eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and it’s just the rich, creamy and indulgent taste that makes it an absolute sweet treat hit for me.
I’ve never made cheesecake….until now. To be honest, I always found the ones you buy are SO good I just never thought to bother. However, over the Christmas period, I fancied the idea of making something seasonal with gingerbread and came across a great recipe from Tesco which is a simple Gingerbread cheesecake (it’s this one!).
As always I pimped it up a bit and added my touch, and in this instance it was an addition of white chocolate and caramel.
Ingredients:
- 80g salted butter, plus extra for greasing
- 300g pack ginger nut biscuits, finely crushed
- white chocolate 100g
- Carnation tinned caramel 397g
For the cheesecake filling:
- 400g soft cheese (at room temperature)
- 150g Greek yogurt (at room temperature)
- 250ml soured cream (at room temperature)
- 200g caster sugar
- 20g plain flour
- 1 orange, zested
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp mixed spice
- 3 medium eggs
Method:
- Line the base and sides of a 23cm springform cake tin with baking paper and grease the sides with butter. Preheat the oven to gas 3, 160°C, fan 140°C.
- Melt the butter over a low heat. Once melted, remove from the heat. Tip in the crushed biscuits and stir into the melted butter. Press into the base of the tin with the base of a glass, then use your fingers to press up the sides. Chill in the fridge while you make the filling.
- Gently whisk together all the filling ingredients in a large bowl until combined. Don’t over-whip it! Pour over the biscuit base. Bake for 50 mins until the sides are puffing up and appear firm, but there’s still a wobble in the centre about 8cm wide.
- Turn the oven off and open the oven door half way. Cool the cheesecake in the tin, inside the oven. This gradual cooling helps to avoid a cracked cheesecake. Once at room temperature, remove from the oven and chill in the fridge for 2 hrs.
- Once cooled, add the tin of caramel over the top.
- Melt the white chocolate in a microwaveable bowl in the microwave, then drizzle over the top of the caramel, I’m sure there’s a *proper* way of doing this but i just waved my spoon over the top and it seemed to work!
- I made some gingerbread men (you can just use some ginger biscuits tbh!) and crush / sprinkle the biscuit over the top and drizzle over some of the remaining melted white chocolate.
It’s a truly delicious combination and it was actually not as hard to make as I had always thought. I don’t know why but I was super impressed that it actually tasted like proper cheesecake and everything!
The gingerbread base was a really nice touch and it’s got me thinking about my next baked cheesecake! I think I’ll try something fruity next : the classic strawberry cheesecake has always been my favourite so maybe I’ll do a take on that.
E N J O Y !
