Kathryn Warwick

I discovered this recipe in one of those magazines that comes with a Sunday newspaper in 2006. (If I’m going to admit to it, it was You that comes free with The Mail on Sunday, I hasten to add that I did not purchase said paper, but I usually do scour any supplements lying round the house for recipes.)

A total no-brainer - maple syrup and cheesecake; what’s not to love? Well Nigella Lawson apparently as this is adapted from one of her recipes. I’m quite fond of the voluptuous chef but I know there are quite a few that don’t like her sexy-food-ways on the television.

When I moved out a while later, I thought I took the ragged, ripped out pages with me inside one of my cookery books, but when I came to look for it to make the cheesecale, I had misplaced it.

I checked through my copies Nigella’s books and through the ones I didn’t have at my boyfriend’s mam’s house but I couldn’t find the same recipe. I could remember most of the ingredients, but not the quantities. (Turns out this recipe is in Nigella’s Christmas if you are after an un-bastardised version.)

On my next phone call home to the parents, I asked my mam if she knew where the loose pages were. She had seen that I had pulled them out to take with me and thoughtfully put the pages inside another cookery book. That wasn’t mine. That was hers. And therefore still in her kitchen.

Anyway, she read me the ingredients and quantities over the phone and as I was writing them down I changed them a bit. So this is my resulting recipe based on Nigella Lawson’s Gleaming Maple cheesecake:

• 100g of unsalted butter
• 12 Digestive biscuits
• 600g of cream cheese (I’d recommend you use full-fat)
• 125ml of maple syrup (it’s usually half a jar if you don’t want to dirty a measuring jug)
• 50g of caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons of cornflour
• 4 eggs
• Half a teaspoon of cider vinegar (you can use lemon juice as directed by the original recipe but I think the taste is a little distracting)
• 20-22cm spring-form cake tin
• A roasting tray big enough to get the cake tin in (for the bain-marie or water bath)
• Cling film and strong foil
• Oven set to 170 degrees Centigrade

A couple of hours before you start get your eggs, cream cheese and maple syrup out of the fridge, and make a space for the cheesecake to go in later. Turn your oven on to the right temperature.

If you have a food processor - get it out, it takes a fraction of the time to make if you have one.

First blitz up the biscuits, or split them into two food bags and bash them to pieces with something heavy if you don’t have a food processor. Then add the cold butter in chunks and blitz again until it has clumped together in the mixer. If not using a food processor, melt the butter in a saucepan (big enough to accommodate the crushed biscuits) then stir in the digestives.

Push the biscuits into the bottom of the tin with your fingers or the back of a spoon, then wrap the tin in two layers of cling film and then two layers of foil to protect the cheesecake while it is baking in the water bath. Put the tin in the fridge.

Clean out the processor jug or grab a quite big mixing bowl, and whack in your cream cheese, sugar, maple syrup and cornflour. Mix this up until it is all incorporated. Use a whisk if you aren’t using a processor, but try not to whisk in too much air. Baked cheesecakes are supposed to be dense.

Put a full kettle on to boil.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix or process again. Finally add the cider vinegar and mix.

Take your tin out of the fridge and place it in the roasting dish. Top the biscuits with the cheesecake mixture and level out the top with a spatula. Fill the roasting dish with hot water from the kettle - about half way, then put into the middle of the oven.

The cheesecake in my experience will take between 50 minutes and an hour and a half. I once made this at my boyfriends parents house, they have a fan assisted oven - I set the timer for an hour, and it was overcooked when I got to it. On the other hand when I make it at my parents house, they have a Rayburn - it can take up to an hour and a half. Don’t worry how long it is in the oven for, just keep checking on it, it’s not like baking a cake, it won’t sink. You just have to set the eggs in it. It will be perfect when, when you shake it gently, it will wobble slightly in the middle.

Serve with a little more maple syrup poured over the top.

Nigella reckons this serves eight, but if you are serving it after dinner you can get away easily with ten servings.