Recipe: Pumpkin Cheesecake

Rounding of a series of seasonal pumpkin recipes, this is a delicious weekend feast.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 225g digestive biscuits
• 60g butter
• Juice and zest 1 lemon
• 340g cooked pumpkin (steamed or roasted)
• 225g caster sugar
• 450g cream cheese
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 4 eggs
• 90ml double cream
• 90ml natural yoghurt

Instructions:

1. Heat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.
2. Break the digestive biscuits into crumbs. Melt the butter over a low heat and mix in the biscuit crumbs and lemon zest. Lightly grease a 25cm cake tin and press the crumbs into the base and up the sides slightly.
3. Mix together the cream cheese, pumpkin flesh, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg until smooth. Beat the eggs and fold into the pumpkin mixture. Turn into the tin and bake in the oven for 90 minutes until the surface is set but the underneath still slightly squidgy.
4. Take the cheesecake out of the oven and let it cool in the tin. When cool, turn it on to a serving plate, cover with clingfilm and chill overnight.
5. Whip the double cream until thick and fold in the yoghurt and the lemon juice. Spread over the top of the cheesecake and serve at room temperature. Yum.