Decadent Baked Fudge Cheesecake with Salted Caramel Topping

Fudge! Cheesecake! Two of my favourite things in the world….put them together and add salted caramel into the equation and I am in heaven! I have always been a lover of a decadent cheesecake, whether baked or the fridge cake variety, and I cannot resist it if it is on the menu. There are two things that I usually look out for on restaurant menus and that is cheesecake and creme brulee. I have been known to rate a restaurant by their cheesecake and creme  brulee! I have made many cheesecakes in my lifetime. At one stage I was making 4 a week to supply to a local coffee shop. Recently I started looking for some inspiration to try a new flavour and I came across some images for caramel cheesecake or fudge cheesecake. I love anything fudgey/caramel/dulce de leche/milk jam so I decided to try crumbling creamy blocks of fudge into the actual cheesecake to be baked and then serving it with a caramel topping. To cut the richness of it I decided to add salt to the caramel. It was soooo good and my whole family loved it!

FUDGEY BAKED CHEESECAKE WITH SALTED CARAMEL TOPPING

Serves 8 big slices

INGREDIENTS:

CRUST:

200g Ginger Biscuits (coconut or oatmeal biscuits would work well too)

160ml Melted Butter

FILLING:

2 x 230g Full Fat Cream Cheese

250ml Full Cream Greek Yoghurt

4 XL Eggs – lightly beaten

1 Can Condensed Milk (397g)

3-4 Lemons – juice squeezed and strained (should be about 100ml or just over

1 Vanilla Pod – split and seeds scraped out (keep the pod for vanilla sugar)

50g Creamy good quality Fudge (don’t use crystallized flopped fudge because it will spoil the creaminess of the finished cheesecake)

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 160 °C

Grease a 24cm loose bottomed springform pan with butter (I like to line the base of mine as well with baking parchment)

Crush the biscuits very finely to a powder – use a food processor or meat mallet but they need to be very fine

Add to a mixing bowl then pour over the melted butter and mix in.

Press the crumb mixture into the base (I use the bottom of a highball glass) and right up the sides of the pan. Place the pan onto a baking sheet or cookie pan and bake for 15 minutes
Add all the filling ingredients (excepting for the fudge)  to your mixer or food processor

Process or whisk on top speed for a few seconds until just creamy with no lumpy bits of cream cheese or yoghurt

Pour the filling into the prepared base, scraping all of it out of the mixing bowl

Crumble the fudge over the top of the filling (push some of it down into the filling using a cocktail stick)

Place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for one hour until it is just set then turn off the oven, leave the door slightly ajar and allow to cool completely to room temperature in the oven

Cover with cling film and refrigerate until needed

Remove from fridge and bring to room temperature before slicing and serving with a delicious salted caramel sauce

Tip: The crust needs to stand higher than the filling in this cheesecake…..the edges don’t have to be level or smooth….rustic is good!

SALTED CARAMEL SAUCE

INGREDIENTS:

150g Soft Brown Sugar
50g Golden Syrup
100g Butter
125ml Cream
5ml Good Quality Sea Salt Flakes

METHOD:

Melt the butter and syrup in a medium saucepan with high sides
Remove from the heat, add the sugar and return to the heat to dissolve the sugar, don’t stir at this stage, you can swirl the contents of the pan if you need to
As soon as the sugar is all dissolved remove from heat and pour in the cream (it will spit madly and want to boil up) and half of the salt and stir well with a wooden spoon
Return to heat and heat through while stirring continuously until it has all mixed in well and the sauce has started darkening and thickens….not too long as it burns quite easily. It will thicken more as it cools down
Allow to cool then add the rest of the salt flakes
Can be bottled and stored in the fridge

To serve as a sauce heat a few spoonsful of salted caramel with 1Tbs Milk or Cream to thin it a bit. Drizzle over the slices of cheesecake and prepare to be transported into salted caramel cheesecake nirvana!

Recipe and photos taken with permission from BrownieGirl Blog