I'm rarely at a loss for words. But sometimes, I find that other people are able to express things better than I can. Case in point: after we made this cheesecake in the Delish kitchen and brought it downstairs for our coworkers to enjoy, our colleague Charlotte Palermino posted this to Instagram:
I'm not sure I could say it any clearer.
If you're not currently familiar with cookie butter, you'd best get acquainted. Cookie butter is made from crushed Speculoos cookies—a spicy Dutch shortbread that tastes like something between a graham cracker and a ginger snap—and has a texture (surprisingly) like peanut butter. The traditional version is made by Lotus (called Biscoff Spread), but Trader Joe's also makes a killer version (called Speculoos Cookie Butter) that almost always sells out this time of year.
This cheesecake gets its cookie butter kick in three ways. First, we replaced the usual graham cracker crumb crust with a Biscoff cookie crust—which gives the cake a somewhat gingery/sweet base. The cookies are also a little more buttery than graham, so it bakes up crunchier. Second, we swirled cookie butter into the batter, so the whole cake tastes ever so slightly of cinnamon and spice. It's subtle, but definitely noticeable. Finally, we crushed cookies and drizzled melted cookie butter on top, which, frankly, we did because we just wanted the cookie butter factor to whack you over the head.
We could tell you how damn good this cheesecake is—but we'll let our colleague Michelle Profis, senior editor at CountryLiving.com, say it for us:
Get the recipe here.
