White Chocolate and Ginger Cheesecake

Twenty minutes of work, no oven, seven ingredients, and the fridge does the rest overnight — the dessert to make when there are people coming and you want it finished the day before. It is Wagamama's, reverse-engineered.

Total time: 3 h 20 min
Prep: 20 min
Serves: 10

Ingredients

Base

196 g (7 oz) ginger biscuits, crushed to crumbs
70 g (2½ oz) butter, melted

Filling

252 g (9 oz) cream cheese, full-fat block style, at room temperature
252 g (9 oz) mascarpone
196 g (7 oz) white chocolate, 2 squares reserved for grating over
3 pieces candied ginger, chopped small

To serve

caramel sauce, shop-bought

Equipment

23 cm springform pan (9 in) — the ring is what lets you get the cheesecake out without breaking the base up

Instructions

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Crush the biscuits to crumbs, either in a food processor or by sealing them in a bag and going at them with a rolling pin, then tip them into the butter and stir until evenly coated. Press the mixture into the base of the springform pan and refrigerate while you make the filling.
Set aside 2 squares of the white chocolate for grating over at the end. Break the rest into pieces and melt it in a glass jug in the microwave in 30-second bursts — three or four is usually enough. Leave it to cool slightly.
Whisk the cream cheese and mascarpone together in a medium bowl. A handheld whisk takes seconds; a wooden spoon works too, with more effort.
Whisk in the melted white chocolate a little at a time. Adding it slowly is what keeps the mixture smooth — see the note below if it goes grainy anyway.
Stir the chopped ginger through, then spread the filling evenly over the chilled base. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.
Release the ring, grate the reserved white chocolate over the top, and serve in small slices with caramel sauce drizzled over.

Notes & tips

From the source.

Add the white chocolate slowly. It can look grainy as it hits the cold cheeses. If that happens, carry on — the set cheesecake looks and tastes fine.
Go easy on the ginger. Easier to add more next time than to take it out. Any sweet ginger you can chop works: stem ginger in syrup, crystallised or non-crystallised from a packet, or plain candied.
The cream cheese wants to be full-fat and block style, out of the fridge for 30–60 minutes first, or it fights the whisk.
No gingersnaps? Digestives or Graham crackers instead, with 1 tsp ground ginger, a pinch of allspice and about ½ tsp cinnamon stirred into the crumbs.
It sets without gelatine — the white chocolate firms up and does that job. Take it out of the fridge about 30 minutes before serving so it softens slightly before slicing.
The filling has no added sugar. The white chocolate is the only sweetener in it; the sweetness the dessert needs is in the biscuit base and the caramel.
The caramel is optional but the author strongly recommends it. Ordinary bottled sauce is fine, including a lower-sugar one.
Freezing: leave it on the pan base, cover loosely with foil, and put the whole thing in a large container. Defrost a couple of hours on the counter and then move it to the fridge, or overnight in the fridge if the weather is warm. Add the caramel at the last minute.
In the fridge it is at its best for 3 days and good for up to 5, sealed or well covered. That figure is the author's, given in reply to a comment rather than in the recipe itself.

Variations

Skip the ginger and use chopped berries, chocolate chips, crushed Oreos, or chopped pieces of a candy bar instead — the author treats this as a base recipe.
Swap the white chocolate for milk or dark chocolate.

Source

Helen Schofield, Scrummy Lane, 28 July 2019 — her own reconstruction of the white chocolate and ginger cheesecake served at Wagamama, whose recipe is not published. Instructions rewritten; the source's ounces converted at the fixed equivalent of 28 g.