Why Was The Base Of My White Chocolate Cheesecake Crumbly?

Our answer

Nigella's White Chocolate Cheesecake (from AT MY TABLE) is a no-bake cheesecake that is very easy to make. The base is made from gingernut biscuits (gingersnap cookies). These can vary slightly according to brand, so you may need to add an extra 10-15g butter if the base is too crumbly. If you are doing this in a food processor then the crumb mixture should actually start to stick together and cling to the blade. If you are making the base by hand then make sure that the butter is very soft, or it may help to melt the butter first. Also, press the cookie crumb mixture into the base firmly so that it compacts a little and chill the mixture before adding the cheesecake filling.

The cheesecake filling should have a vanilla flavour from the white chocolate, as well as from the vanilla extract. The quality of white chocolate varies a lot, from candy-type bars that are almost all vegetable fat and sugar with artificial flavouring to those with a high ratio of cocoa butter and containing seeds from a vanilla bean. Nigella mentions white "cooking" chocolate as this tends to be the higher quality version and we would suggest using a white chocolate with a high cocoa butter content (25% or above). This will give a good flavour and a firm set to the cheesecake.