Gleaming Maple Cheesecake Crust

Our answer

Nigella's Gleaming Maple Cheeecake (from NIGELLA CHRISTMAS) is a baked cheesecake that is sweetened and flavoured with maple syrup and then doused with maple syrup before serving, giving a gleaming exterior. The base is made with digestive biscuits (cookies) and for the US graham crackers are the closest alternative and work well. You need 1½ cups of graham cracker crumbs. For US conversions of Nigella's recipes you can slide the toggle button at the top right hand side of the ingredients list across to "CUPS".

Digestive biscuits are a crumbly semi-sweet biscuit made with wholemeal (whole wheat) flour. They are often available in other countries, usually under the McVities brand. In France they are sold as "sablés anglais" and in Australia Arnott's Granita biscuits are the closest local alternative. If you can't find any of these then a plain, semi-sweet biscuit could be used as an alternative, but you may need to adjust the amount of butter used to bind the crumbs together for the cheesecake base.