Nigella’s Basque Burnt Cheesecake with Licorice Syrup

Nigella Lawson’s latest TV series, Cook, Eat, Repeat, is currently gracing our screens on Sunday nights.  I have long been a fan of Nigella, and I enjoy watching her shows even when the recipes are not to my taste.

One of the most recent recipes from  Cook, Eat, Repeat is for a Basque Burnt Cheesecake with Licorice Sauce. It was not the cheesecake which caused angst among some viewers, but the fact that Nigella doused it in licorice sauce.

Nigella has previously let her love of licorice be known, so it came as no surprise to me that she has a licorice box. The Sardinian licorice pellets from this box were used to make the licorice  sauce for the cheesecake.

 Now I adore cheesecake and licorice, so this combination was fine with me. However, some viewers were up in arms because, not being lovers of licorice, they were upset that Nigella had sullied the cheesecake with the licorice sauce.

I can say that I loved this combination of cheesecake and lucorice. I made a quarter of the recipe in a 6” cake tin. My cheesecake refused to look “burnt” long after it ceased to be jiggly in the middle, so I gave up. It still tastes good, although being far from the burnished chestnut colour referred to by Nigella.

For the sauce, I was not in possession of Sardinian licorice pellets, nor was I going to pay $15 to buy them in Australia. Instead, i took Nigella’s proportions (halved) of sugar and water, added half a teaspoon of licorice powder that I already had from making Nigella’s famed licorice and blackcurrant cake, and a single knob of Darrell Lea soft eating licorice, and boiled that up for 20 minutes or so. I then strained out the licorice knob (which did not dissolve), and added a couple of drops of black food colouring for effect. And hey, it tasted good, even though not the same as Nigella’s sauce.

If you are a licorice lover, do yourself a favour and make this lovely cheesecake and the accompanying licorice sauce. It’s delicious!