Another year is coming to an end so my thoughts and recipe testing naturally turn to festive food. These vegan cranberry cheesecake bars are my first foray into seasonal baking this year. They combine quintessentially festive flavours of cranberry, ginger and orange. They are creamy, indulgent and tangy and I am pretty pleased with how well they turned out.

For those of my readers who celebrate Thanksgiving this coming Thursday, these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars make for a perfect and easy Thanksgiving dessert that you may want to put on your to make list. As opposed to a pie, be it my favourite pecan pie, pumpkin pie or apple pie, these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars don’t require any pastry skills making them an entry level dessert, but they don’t taste like one, I promise.

The base of these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars is a simple biscuit base made of shop-bought ginger biscuits and melted vegan butter. The filling gets made entirely in a food processor and the cranberry topping is a simple cranberry jam that comes together in minutes on the stove, but you can also use shop bought cranberry jam or sauce. The flavours of these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars are cranberries, orange and ginger, which are a classic festive flavour combo. These bars don’t require any cooking skills, aren’t time consuming to make and can be made in advance as they freeze really well. So that’s my pitch, they are easy and damn delicious so I do hope that you’ll make them this year for your special dinner guests.

MORE ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS

BISCUITS:A packet of regular supermarket ginger biscuits is what you need to make the biscuit base for these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars. I used McVities ginger nut biscuits (22 of them, 3 have somehow fallen into my mouth), ground up finely and bound together with some melted vegan butter. I chose to use ginger biscuits as I like the combination of ginger, cranberry and orange and that’s what I would recommend, but if you are not a ginger fan, plain biscuits will work too.

VEGAN BUTTER:I used vegan butter (my favourite brand is Naturli – a Danish brand available in Waitrose and Sainsburys) to bind the biscuit base together and a touch more to make the cheesecake filling more indulgent and cheesecake like. I recommend using unsalted quality vegan butter, the type that comes in a block rather than a plastic tub. You can also use coconut oil to make these – I recommend using odourless coconut oil like this. If using coconut oil, melt it for both applications (base and filling).

PLANT MILK: Plant milk allows you to blend the cashews until silky smooth, you can use any types of plant milk you enjoy. I tend to use soy in all my baking and because that’s what I always have in my fridge.

SUGAR: I used caster sugar to sweeten the cheesecake filling and the cranberry jam. I recommend using caster sugar, which is essentially white superfine sugar as it dissolves well in baking although I am pretty sure that other sugar would work fine too. Be aware that that if you use darker coloured sugar it will impact the colour of the cheesecake.

CASHEWS: Untoasted cashews are what makes these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars indulgent and creamy. Before you blend them into a smooth cream, you need to soak them first to soften them and make them blend better. You can either soak them in boiling water for 20-30 minutes or soak them in cold water for several hours (overnight ideally) to the same effect.

LEMON ZEST AND JUICE: To give these vegan cranberry cheesecake bars a bit more tang (cranberries are quite tangy too), I added a small amount of lemon juice and a zest of one lemon. I suggest you add the amount of lemon juice to your personal taste though.

ORANGE ZEST: The combination of cranberry and orange is such a classic, plus I like to add orange zest to my cheesecakes especially at this time of the year. I added zest of half and orange to the cranberries, alongside with the juice and kept the remainder of the zest for the cheesecake filling.

VANILLA: I recommend adding a generous amount of vanilla extract (I used paste) to the filling, but if you don’t have it don’t worry, the cheesecake will still taste great.

CRANBERRIES: I wanted make these cheesecake bars festive so I swirled a generous amount of cranberry jam on top of the cheesecake mixture. I used fresh cranberries to make a simple jam on my stove, but you could also use frozen cranberries instead – about 2 cups (not sure what the weight of frozen ones will be). I am pretty sure that shop-bought cranberry jam / sauce – pick the brand with whole cranberries – will work too if you want a shortcut.

HOW TO MAKE IT?

1) MAKE CRANBERRY SWIRL

Put cranberries in a small pot with zest of half an orange (zest the entire orange and put the rest in the cheesecake filling), orange juice and sugar. Simmer on low heat until all of the cranberries burst and the mixture becomes jammy. Add a touch more water if the mixture is too thick – you want to just barely fall off the spoon.

2) MAKE BISCUIT BASE

Place ginger biscuits in a food processor and grind them very finely. Once ground, trickle in melted butter while pulsing several times. The mixture should look like wet sand, if it’s dry add a bit more butter. Transfer the mixture to a prepared baking tin, level with a spatula first then compact well with your hands or using a flat-bottomed glass. Bake at 160° C / 320° F oven (no fan). Allow to cool completely, then refrigerate briefly before adding the filling.

3) BLEND THE FILLING

Make the filling by blending all of the ingredients in a blender until silky smooth. Adjust the amount of lemon juice to your taste remembering that cranberries also bring a lot of tanginess. I settled for 5 tablespoons (75 ml) but you may prefer less. If you use less, add some extra plant milk so that the amount of liquid added in this step is 5 tablespoons total.

4) ASSEMBLE

Pour cheesecake filling to the bottom of the pre-baked and chilled biscuit base. Tap the tin against the counter a few times so that there are no big air bubbles in the mixture (they tend to cause cracks).

Dollop cranberry mixture on top and using a chopstick make decorative swirls on top – see below.

4) BAKE & COOL

Bake until the edges are set and the inside still a touch wobbly – 25 minutes is a sweet spot in my oven. Allow the cheesecake to cool down completely then refrigerate for at least a couple of hours (overnight is best) for neat slices.