Autumn is without a doubt my favourite season. The weather is more manageable (I overheat very easily), evenings start to feel more like, well… evenings, and just about every food you could want becomes available. Particularly these guys…
I always get a small wave of childish excitement when I see pumpkins in the shops; maybe it’s the male I get so much weight for my money thing, I don’t know. But there’s something about them that’s irresistible. Of course, after you’ve bought one the question can sometimes become ‘Great, now I’ve got a pumpkin, what’ll I do with it? So I did a little hunting around online to find something a bit more obscure than the pumpkin pie and the pumpkin soup, both of which I happen to like very much, and I found a cheesecake recipe that looked great. Neither I nor anyone I’d spoken to had heard of a pumpkin cheesecake, so I thought it was definitely worth trying out. I’ve adapted it a little bit to suit my taste and give it an extra tang. It takes time to make but the results are worth it. Give it a go and see what you think.
Pumpkin and Orange Cheesecake
Ingredients
For the base:
200g ginger biscuits
50g butter
For the Filling:
700g fresh pumpkin, peeled, diced and cooked
600g cream cheese
300g natural caster sugar
Juice of 1 orange
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Topping:
100ml double cream
100ml Greek Style natural yogurt
Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 1/2 orange
2 tablespoons runny honey
Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. Blitz the ginger biscuits in a food processor and melt the butter. Mix the butter and biscuits together and use the resulting mixture to line the base of a 9in spring formed cake tin, making sure you press down firmly. Once this is done put the cake tin containing the biscuit base in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile make your cheesecake filling. Put the cream cheese in a large mixing bowl (it will mix better if it has been out of the fridge for a while to soften up), and add the caster sugar, orange juice, eggs and vanilla. Mix the ingredients with a whisk until they are fully incorporated, but not too vigorously as you don’t want too much air getting in. Blitz the cooked pumpkin in the food processor to form a puree and then mix this in as well. Pour the finished cheesecake batter into the chilled cake tin on top of the base and place in the middle of the oven for 90 minutes to 2 hours, or until the cake is firm and slightly browned on top. Once the cheesecake has cooked, remove it from the oven and allow to cool.
To make the topping beat the double cream until it is firm, then fold in the rest of the ingredients. Chill for 30 minutes, and then spread evenly over the top of the cake. Serve either chilled or at room temperature.
