Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake with Salted Caramel Sauce

It's Apples galore on Little Thumbs Up this month. What do apples remind you of besides keeping the good doctor away? 

Let's see - computers, Snow White, Apple Pie and that special person who is the apple of your eye. For me the latest addition to that would be this Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake.

Thanks to Kit's chosen ingredient, this marks my first time baking with apples. My first encounter with apples in bakes is Apple Pie. Apple Pie ala Mode to be exact (Yum!!). Then Apple Strudel, flown all the way from Australia courtesy of my brother. I love both these applelicious pastries but somehow I never thought of baking with apples.

There is always a first time and I jumped at the chance when I spotted this recipe in Allan Bakes Really Good Cheesecakes. This apple cheesecake is baked in disposable aluminium cake liners. The apple mixture is quite easy to make. Just mix the chopped apples with a host of other ingredients and zap it in the microwave.

The cheesecake base is made with Gingersnap cookies and not Digestive Biscuits. Quite honestly, I don't like ginger biscuits. But I decided to follow the recipe and I settled for Arnott's Ginger Nut because I couldn't find anything that said Gingersnap. Are they the same?

When I was crushing the biscuits, I realized that they were not called Ginger Nut for nothing. They are as hard as nuts! There was a lot of boom! boom! boom! coming from my kitchen counter and my arm was very tired. 

The recipe calls for 250g biscuits to 200g butter. Too much butter I thought but seeing that the Ginger Nut biscuits were so hard and dry, maybe it did not seem unreasonable at all. But I regretted. See that? Way too much butter! 

But it was a blessing in disguise and I will tell you why in a moment.

I used the regular cupcake sized disposable aluminium liners and after filling up 12 of those, I was still left with some cheesecake filling. Since I have slightly bigger sized disposable liners, I decided to use two of those. I crushed up 4 digestive biscuits and mixed them into the excess butter. I filled up 2 extra aluminium liners and waited for the first batch of cheesecakes to be baked first.

Notice the two liners at the back are slightly bigger?

For the Caramel Sauce, I did not follow Allan's recipe. Instead, I used the Salted Caramel Sauce that I spotted on Faeez's Blog. I have heard so much about Salted Caramel Sauce and I decided that it was about time that I made some myself. And whoa, no wonder there is so much fuss over it. 

Salty, sweet and buttery, this sauce made the cheesecake taste even better. I mean the cheesecake was already very good. Full of apple and cinnamon aroma, just like eating apple pie. But drizzle some salted caramel sauce onto it, gosh.... I just can't describe it! 

This latest bake has made me very happy. I am not much of a fruit person and baking with fruits (except bananas) did not appeal to me very much until now. Welcome on board, apples! PH loves you! 

I have followed the recipe for the cheesecake almost to a tee except for the caramel sauce. Allan's instructions are quite long and detailed (he is after all an expert!) and I have simplified them in the recipe reproduced below. As for the Salted Caramel Sauce, please hop over to Faeez's or to Sally's Baking Addiction for a step-by-step tutorial.

Should you decide to bake this apple cheesecake, please do not skip the salted caramel sauce. You would be missing out on a lot if you did!

Apple Cinnamon Cheesecake with Salted Caramel Sauce

Recipe source : Adapted from Allan Bakes Really Good Cheesecakes (page 60)

Makes 12 regular cupcake-sized cheesecakes with extra filling to spare (possibly 15-16 cupcake-sized cheesecakes)

Note :

- I used disposable aluminium cupcake liners.

- Once the caked is baked and chilled, I removed them from the liners and transferred them into regular cupcake liners for easy handling.

Ingredients :

For the cheesecake base :

- 250g Gingersnap cookies, finely crushed (I used Arnott's Ginger Nut)

- 200g unsalted butter, melted (I find this amount excessive. Recommend 75-100g only)

Method :

1. Combine crushed cookies with melted butter. Mix well.

2. Divide mixture equally among disposable cupcake liners and press firmly onto the base.

3. Bake for 15 minutes at 160C.

4. Set-aside to cool.

For the Apple Mixture :

- 3 medium apples, pared, cored and chopped. (I used Granny Smith)

- 1 tsp lemon juice

- 1 tsp grated lemon zest

- 3 tbsp light brown sugar

- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

- a pinch of ground cloves (I omitted)

- a pinch of salt

- 1 tbsp cornflour

Method :

1. Combine all the ingredients in a microwave-safe container.

2. Microwave for 6-8 minutes or until apples are soft.

3. Mix well and leave to cool.

4. Place into food processor and pulse gently, do not puree (I did not do this)

5. Set aside.

Cheesecake filling :

- 500g cream cheese, at room temperature.

- 180g castor sugar

- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

- 1 tsp ground cinnamon

- a pinch of salt

- 2 tbsp cornflour

- 2 medium eggs

- 2 medium egg yolks

- 60ml Double Cream

Method :

1. Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth.

2. Add vanilla extract, lemon juice, cinnamon, salt and cornflour and mix well.

3. Add eggs and egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. Add cream and mix well.

5. Add apple mixture and incorporate.

6. Pour filling equally into prepared liners and place cake liners into a roasting pan. Fill roasting pan with hot water until it reaches halfway up the side of the cake liners. (I used the steam-bake method by placing a container of hot water below the baking rack).

7. Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes. (Mine were done at 40 minutes)

8. Turn oven off and leave cakes to cool completely in the oven with oven door ajar. (I only left them in there for 20 minutes).

9. When cool, remove cakes from oven, cool further and refrigerate overnight.

10. To unmould cakes, use scissors to cut open the cake liners.

11. Insert a palette knife under the base of the cakes and lift onto serving plate. (I am very clumsy, so I put on a plastic glove and used my hand to lift the cakes onto plate)

12. To serve, drizzle with caramel sauce.

Salted Caramel Sauce : Please go to BitterSweetSpicy or Sally's Baking Addiction

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Doreen of My Little Favourite DIY and hosted by Kit of I-Lost in Austen.

This post is also linked to Cook-Your-Books #16 hosted by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.