Baked Pear and Goats Cheese Cheesecake

We are great lovers of cheesecake in our house and as part of the #CapricornChallenge I decided I had to make a cheesecake. In case you are wondering what the #CapricornChallenge is,  Ethel the Goat sent me a lovely hamper of goodies including Capricorn Goats Cheese and challenged me to come up with some recipes. I have not gone baa-rmy, you can talk to Ethel the Goat on twitter, she is a very nice goat who helps create Capricorn Goats Cheese. I grabbed the challenge by the horns and created a number of different recipes which I will be sharing with you.

This is my recipe for Baked Pear and Goats Cheese Cheesecake which was a bit of an experiment but has turned out nicely. There was a slight disaster with a leaky cake tin, for a moment I thought all the topping was going to end up on the bottom of the oven. Luckily not much leaked out, but I really must get some new cake tins.

Baked Pear and Goats Cheese Cheesecake

First make the biscuit base.

Ingredients

• 1 pack shortbread biscuits
• Some flaked almonds
• 55 g butter

Method

1. Crush the shortbread biscuits into  crumbs. I ended up with about 2 cupfuls of crumbs from a packet and my son had great fun bashing them into crumbs with a rolling pin. It is probably easier to use a food mixer but not so much fun.
2. I threw in a handful of flaked almonds as I was feeling experimental and thought this would taste nice.
3. Melt the butter gently in a pan.
4. In a bowl mix together the biscuit crumbs, almonds and melted butter and press into a cake tin. If you have baking parchment you can line the tin with this first, if not then wipe a thin layer of butter or margarine on the tin to stop it sticking.

The base ended up looking like this

The next step was to prepare the pears to add to the cheesecake. I wanted them to be a bit softer so I poached them slightly before adding them to the base.

Ingredients

• 2 -3 pears (I used 2 and a bit, it just depends how big the pears are, you need enough to cover the base)
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of water
• 1 sachet of vanilla paste

Method

1. Put the brown sugar and water into a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves.
2. Add the vanilla and then simmer for a few minutes.
3. Add the pears and cook gently for ten minutes
4. Leave the pears till they are cool, then drain the liquid and place the pears on the biscuit base.

It looks a little bit like this at this stage

The final stage is to make the cheesecake topping.

Ingredients

• 400 g cream cheese
• 100 g Capricorn goats cheese
• ½ cup of caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 sachet vanilla paste

Method

1. Mix the cheese until it all goes fluffy.
2. Add the sugar and eggs and mix together.
3. Finally add the flour and vanilla and mix again.
4. Pour the mixture on top of the base
5. Bake in the oven at 180 C for 45 to 60 minutes until it is firm. You can also insert a knife and check if it comes out clean to see if it is cooked.
6. Leave to cool and then refrigerate.

Finally serve and enjoy.

I was really pleased with how this turned out, it was quite mild and delicious. I would love to try this with a different fruit, I think raspberries would work really well as they would be quite tangy. If you give it a go I would love to know what you think.

Disclosure: I was sent a hamper of ingredients to provide inspiration for the recipes

Other posts you may be interested in:

Ethel’s Farmhouse Chicken