Cookie cake with Christmas caramel

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 250 g biscuits, dark (e.g. caramel or cocoa biscuits)
• 130 g butter
• 8 sheets of gelatin
• 500 g yogurt
• 150 g crème fraîche
• 250 g quark
• 100 g biscuits, light (e.g. vanilla biscuits or cookie cutters)
• 75 g sugar
• 2 packets of vanilla sugar (bourbon vanilla)
• 200 g whipped cream
• 100 ml apple juice
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 150 g sugar
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar (bourbon vanilla)
• 30 ml water
• 200 g whipped cream
• 30 g butter
• ¼ tsp spice mix (speculoos spice)
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 1 package of puff pastry
• powdered sugar

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest time approx. 3 hours 20 minutes; Total time approx. 4 hours 20 minutes

Sweet and sinful, no baking

For the cake base, pulverize the dark biscuits in a food processor or in a freezer bag with a rolling pin. There really shouldn’t be any large pieces left. Melt the butter. In the meantime, place the rim of a springform pan on a cake plate, or alternatively, line the bottom of the springform pan with baking paper and place the rim around it. Since I like to avoid having to loosen the base, I now always choose to simply place the rim on a plate. Mix the melted butter well with the biscuit crumbs and flatten the resulting “dough” onto the bottom of the springform pan. Refrigerate the pan for at least 20 minutes. For the filling, soak the gelatin in cold water according to the package instructions. Mix the yogurt, crème fraîche, and quark with the sugar and a packet of vanilla sugar until all the sugar crystals have dissolved. Roughly crumble the light biscuits and stir into the cream. Whip the cream with the remaining packet of vanilla sugar until stiff peaks form and set aside. Combine the apple juice (or white wine or grape juice if you like) and the cinnamon in a saucepan and heat. Squeeze out the gelatin and dissolve it in the warm apple juice. Take three tablespoons of the quark cream and stir it into the juice, then add this mixture to the quark cream and mix thoroughly for two minutes. Finally, fold in the cream. Remove the springform pan from the refrigerator and pour the cream onto the base. Drop the pan from a height of 20 cm onto the countertop or tap it on the countertop to release any air bubbles and smooth the surface. Place the cake in the refrigerator and chill for at least three hours. Meanwhile, prepare the caramel: Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Pour in the cream and bring to a boil, then stir in the butter and spices. Simmer gently on medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the color has darkened slightly. Set the caramel aside and let it cool. To decorate the stars, cut out stars from the puff pastry and bake in a preheated oven at 200°C (fan oven) for about 12 minutes. Once done, dust with powdered sugar. Let cool. Remove the cake from the refrigerator, carefully loosen the edges with a knife, and smooth them with the back of a spoon if necessary. Insert the puff pastry stars into the surface of the cake and decorate with 1/3 of the caramel, using a spoon to create a thread-like pattern. Serve with the remaining caramel.