Cheesecake with a coconut crisp base

I experimented with cheesecake last night. I’ve never enjoyed doing the painful crush-biscuits-with-butter exercise for a cheesecake base, especially as we don’t /buy/ biscuits so I have to make them and THEN crush them and ugh.

So, experiment.
200g butter, melted
1c flour
1c sugar
three or four? cups of fine dessicated coconut.
Mixed all of the above with a little cinnamon spice mix until it was the appropriate melted-butter-squashable texture that a cheesecake base should be. Squished into a springform tin, then baked for 20 mins in a 180c oven to brown and crisp it up some. (With less butter, this is my apple crumble topping mixture.)

While that was baking, beat together 1kg of cream cheese, 2 tins of sweetened condensed milk, about 1/4 c lemon juice, a slosh of brandy. When the base came out the oven, I added gelatine to the cheesecake mix (it’ll firm up without it, but I like the risk being removed). Poured the cheesecake over the base, allowed to set.

Once that layer set, I threw mixed berries, water, mixed berry sauce from the fridge, and more gelatine in a saucepan, turned it into sauce, and poured over the top. Obviously this layer could be anything (I considered banana nut jam as an option too, and didn’t have enough passionfruit).

Yum yum yum. (Image recycled, as I broke into the cheesecake to eat it before taking pictures.)

Originally published at kiwi geek. You can comment here or there.