Upside-Down Toffee Apple Cheesecake

This is a good autumn/winter dessert. I'd had an image in my mind of what I wanted to achieve, and given some thought to how to go about it, and this is what eventuated. It actually wasn't what I had in mind: I think it is better.

I started thinking about this as a way to use up my crazy over-sweet maple cinder toffee. I thought introducing it to a tangy apple cheesecake would be a good way to dilute the sweetness, but I didn't want to lose the texture by crumbling it into a biscuit crumb base.

So if it wasn't going to be on the base, that pretty much meant that the toffee was going to be on top. And if the toffee was on top it really didn't need a base as well. Thus was born the upside-down toffee apple cheesecake.

Upside-Down Toffee Apple Cheesecake (serves 6-ish)

3 bramley apples (or other large cooking apple)

1 tsp sugar

450g cream cheese

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

cinder toffee (a couple of crunchies/ violet crumbles if you don't happen to have any homemade lying about)

4 gingernut biscuits (optional - don't buy them specially!)

Peel, core and slice the apples and put in a saucepan with the sugar and a splash of water. Cook until soft, then mash with a fork to a fluffy purée and allow to cool.

Beat the cream cheese with the vanilla until smooth, then add the apple purée and eggs and beat in well. Pour the mixture into a pie plate and bake at 150C for about 45 minutes or until just beginning to take colour but still slightly wobbly in the middle. Cool, then chill for a few hours in the fridge.

Cut/break the toffee and biscuits into chunky pieces and spread thickly over the top, pushing lightly into the surface.

The apple gives this a light, almost moussey texture, so it is more of a scooping cheesecake than a slicing one!