Cookies and cream cheesecake.

This is a fairly easy cheesecake to make and it goes down well with everyone. It’s also a great one for individual portions, instead of one big cheesecake, but you can do that too.

Ingredients

250g plain chocolate biscuits
100g butter, melted
150g packet of chocolate cream-filled biscuits (oreos)
50g dark eating chocolate, melted
2 teaspoons gelatine
2 tablespoons water
375g cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
300ml cream
180g white eating chocolate, melted

1. Grease one 24cm spring-form tin.
2. Process plain biscuits in food processor; add melted butter. Press mixture flat into the tin. Refrigerate.
3. Make filling by sprinkling gelatine over the water in a small heatproof jug; stand jug in small saucepan of simmering water. Stir until gelatine dissolves; cool 5 minutes.
4. Beat cheese, extract and sugar in medium bowl with electric mixer until smooth; beat in cream. Stir in white chocolate, gelatine mixture and cut up biscuits.
5. Pour filling on top of base and refrigerate overnight.
6. Serve topped with dark chocolate.

Tips

Instead of one big cheesecake, you will need an 80cm length of 50mm diameter PVC pipe, cut into 10cm lengths; ask the hardware store to do this for you, or use a hacksaw.
You will need to grease each pipe and line with baking paper.
Place one biscuit in each pipe – creme biscuits – so you will need two packets instead of one and you won’t need the plain chocolate biscuits.

For the big cheesecake I tend to put a bit more cream cheese in. Usually 500g, which is just 2 tubs. I also tend to add just a little bit more cream, but leave everything else the same. It works fine.

With the white chocolate, because it will be warm and the cheesecake mixture will be room temperature, you will find the chocolate will set quite quickly. As soon as you start pouring the chocolate in, you’ll need to start mixing it in. It will still turn hard, but you have a chance to mix it in before it turns into one big lump.

I tend not to serve it with chocolate on top. It is rich enough as it is. I usually just serve it with a bit of whipped cream.

As there are different flavours of oreos now, I like to mix it up a bit and buy a different flavour each time. I started using the original, but then found the chocolate filling. I find it is a bit better than the original white filling. There is now strawberry filling too. Can’t wait to try that!

When mixing the gelatine with the water, I find the best way to do this is to sit a small bowl in the top of my jug. This won’t be possible with every jug, but my one has a fully removable lid, which allows me to sit a bowl in without it falling in. I then boil the jug and just leave it. Works wonders.