Vegan Biscoff Cheesecake

In case you stumbled upon this recipe and thought it was one of my high protein cheesecakes, it’s not! I really like baking and sometimes I like to create recipes that don’t care about being macro-friendly! You could definitely make this cheesecake have better macros if you used the TVP crust from one of my other cheesecake recipes, or subbed in a protein cereal (like Catalina Crunch) instead of the Biscoff cookies for the crust!

If you’ve tried to make a vegan cheesecake with vegan cream cheese, you may have already run into the issue where it really doesn’t work. Most vegan cream cheese options are made mostly out of coconut oil, which means it turns into a puddle when you add heat. You can find a few that are cashew-based and those will work better, but I personally prefer using blended silken tofu instead of vegan cream cheese. It bakes better and is really creamy and silky. Silken tofu also has a pretty mild flavor which gives you a lot of freedom to easily make it taste like whatever you want.

For this recipe, I use Biscoff cookies for the crust. I always find it challenging to find vegan graham crackers (that don’t contain honey), so I really enjoy using Biscoff cookies as a substitution. They also add a warm, holiday flavor!

If you’re still like why the hell am I on this not high protein recipe, you could check out my High Protein Peanut Butter Cheesecake, Protein Pudding Pie, or High Protein Puppy Chow recipes!

Or if you’re like holy crap, I didn’t know you had YOLO recipes, you might also like my Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Peanut Butter Silken Pie and Pumpkin Apple Crumble Muffins! For the record, these are the things I take to family gatherings and potlucks, because they are guaranteed to delight and win over non-vegans (who don’t care about getting their protein from desserts) 🙂

Ingredients

• Biscoff Cookies – they sell these at most grocery stores. You might know them as the accidentally vegan cookies you can eat on an airplane. They have a really warm, holiday flavor to them so they work great in holiday desserts, and are also a good substitute for graham crackers. If you for some reason hate these, you could also just use graham crackers.
• Vegan Butter – while writing this, there is currently some bizarre shortage of vegan butter, so I’ve tried making this with a few different vegan butters (during my recipe testing), and they all turned out great! So use whichever butter you can find!

• Silken Tofu – I always use extra firm silken tofu, because the macros are slightly better and I think the water content is a little lower as well. Other silken tofu options will work fine. Please make sure to use silken tofu because using regular tofu will be this absolutely wretched.
• Brown Sugar – I used light brown sugar.
• Flour – I used all-purpose flour.
• PBFit Peanut Butter Powder – you could also use PB2 or Anthony’s peanut butter flour. I think it adds a really nice layering of flavors to the filling. Do not use peanut butter as a substitute.
• Vanilla Extract
• Salt
• Baking Powder
• Cinnamon, Nutmeg – these spices pair nicely with the Biscoff cookies.
• (Side note – I originally made this recipe with white chocolate chips, but decided to leave them out because it makes the cheesecake crack really bad and didn’t add much to the flavor, so just ignore them being in the picture)

Instructions

• Pre-heat the oven to 350 F (177 C).
• In a small microwaveable bowl, melt the vegan butter.
• Crush/pulverize the Biscoff cookies. We can do this a couple of different ways.
  • If you have a food processor, this is the easiest option. Toss the cookies in the food processor and let it go for a couple seconds. You should end up with basically cookie sand.
  • If you do not have a food processor, you can do what I do when I’m having to bake Christmas desserts in an Airbnb without any of normal kitchen equipment! Toss the cookies in a large Ziploc bag and either crush the cookies with a rolling pin or the bottom of a drinking cup (if you’re using a glass cup, please be careful). You can also do this in a bowl, but it’s messier and harder to make sure you’ve crushed all of the cookies.
• Once you have your cookie sand, dump it in a bowl. Add the melted butter on top and mix it in really well. The melted butter is what helps the cookie crust stay together so it’s important that it gets mixed in very well. Make sure there are no large/hard clumps.
• Dump the cookie sand into the pie pan and form a crust. I recommend using your hands for this part. Gently press down on the cookie sand to create a more compacted layer of the cookies on the bottom of the pie pan and around the sides. It’s important to press down firmly, because that is what will help the crust stay together better when you go to serve it.

• Add the silken tofu and vanilla extract to the blender and blend until nice and creamy. This is a very thick mixture so you may need to intervene with your spatula a few times to get it fully blended. Side note – make sure you drain your silken tofu and don’t add the package water to the blender.
• Scoop your tofu mixture into a large bowl, and add your other filling ingredients – brown sugar, flour, PBFit peanut powder, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix everything together really well until it’s nice and smooth. I use a whisk for this step.

• Pour the filling into the pie pan (on top of the crust), and smooth out the top with your spatula.

• Bake the cheesecake for 43 – 47 minutes, depending on your oven. I personally bake this for 45 minutes in my oven. The top should brown, and the filling, as a whole, should be fairly firm with a slight jiggle left in the middle.

• Allow the cheesecake to rest on your counter (at room temperature) for 2 hours.
• Then move it to the fridge to cool for an additional 2 hours until it is fully cooled off and firm.
• Now you can eat it!

Silly Little Haiku

Biscoff cookies rock

Silken tofu works the best

Now let’s eat this shit