Crunchies are one of those sweets that seem to have been around forever without changing. They’re still that gorgeous chocloate-coated honeycomb of burnt sugar and they’re still delicious. A friend has just had a birthday and wanted a Crunchie cheesecake…

My flavour and ingredient guru was on the case instantly. Make a caramel, burn the sugar that way, let it set and blitz it down, there’s your flavour. Biscoff have the same flavour, so there’s your biscuit base. Milk chocolate ganache for the topping, mix in some bits of Crunchie and you’re golden.

The Ingredients…

Quick spin around the ingredients, Clive, then back to me.

• 6oz Biscoff biscuits, blitzed to crumbs
• 3oz melted butter
• 680g full fat cream cheese
• 320g Marscapone (these quantities are approximate, it’s 2 big packs of Philadelphia plus 1 Tesco Marscapone)
• 9oz burnt sugar (apologies for mixing units of measurements!)
  • 9oz caster sugar into a dry, clean, frying pan. Cook it until it melts. The longer you cook it, the more colour it gets. Pour onto a non-stick baking sheet, allow to cool, then blitz it down to the same consistency as the caster sugar you started with).
• 4 eggs
• 300ml Sour Cream
• 2 packs Crunchie Bites
• 150ml double cream
• 150g milk chocolate, smashed into little bits

These are mostly the same as the Baked New York Cheesecake but with the above Crunchie-inspired tweaks… And, it turns out, that’s the Mark I recipe there so I need to update that.

The Method

Oven to 180°C, mix the Biscoff with the butter and put into the bottom of a 23cm spring-sided cheesecake tin. I believe they’re actually called cake tins, but they’ve got a dedicated purpose here. Bake for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the cream cheese, Marscapone, and sugar together then beat in each egg until combined. Don’t over-work it, you’re just wanting to get everything mixed. With a big spatula, mix in the sour cream.

Get a rolling pin and smash up the Crunchie Bites to make the lumps a bit smaller. Then stir that through. Should’ve taken you ~10 minutes, so take out the base, pour the mix into the tin, and put it back in the oven for the very specific time of 48 minutes. This time is the perfect time for the fan oven I’ve got, your mileage will vary. Experiment! Make a few! Find that sweet sweet spot and write it down somewhere safe.

When the time is up, switch off the oven, open it a crack, then allow the cheesecake to cool in the oven. I’d say you’re looking at a good couple or three hours here.

When you take the cheesecake out of the oven, run a knife around the edge to separate cheesecake from tin but don’t open the spring yet. Make your ganache.

Heat the double cream until nearly boiling, remove from the heat and pour over the smashed chocolate. Whisk until smooth. Allow to cool a bit then pour over the top of the cheesecake.

Now stick it in the fridge overnight.

Et voila! Crunchie Cheesecake. You could, if you wanted to gild the lily, make some honeycomb and decorate the top with shards of the stuff.

I’m reliably informed that the sweetness of the milk chocolate ganache is the perfect foil for the not-too-sweet cheesecake filling and that it fit the brief perfectly.

We’re now on the hunt for other ideas… There will be a coffee and wallnut cheesecake, probably later today, rum and raisin will happen in the future, as will mint-choc-chip. Snickers is too close to Mars Bar, and I’ve already done that. Twix is too simple. Oh, banoffee pie cheesecake is on the horizon as well. The thing is, once you’ve got the basic recipe, you can tweak and experiment to your heart’s content.

Let me know how it goes, eh?