caramel macadamia cheesecake

caramel macadamia cheesecake

• 21 Nov 2012

I'd planned on doing something special for Thanksgiving but I spent most of the weekend feeling a bit under the weather so it didn't happen. However what I'm going to share with you today is pretty special. It's an Ottolenghi recipe for a caramel macadamia cheesecake and as he writes so well, I've attached a link to the recipe on Nordljus' blog rather than rewriting the recipe.



The original recipe uses cream cheese but I find cream cheese too bland so when I make cheesecake, I usually use a combination of cream cheese and farm cottage cheese. I'm also not a fan of biscuit bases so I made a simple shortbread base instead.



This is not the sort of cheesecake you whip up on a whim. It's a 2 day effort of nut toasting, cheesecake construction, toffee preparation and sauce making.



As it's such a labour of love I did take quite a few pictures.



In a rare move, I actually carried the cheesecake and trimmings down 3 flights of stairs to photograph it outdoors. Somehow I managed to get it down the stairs and back up again without a disaster.



I was meeting a friend for dinner and I always bring dessert, so this was my contribution.



I used my sweet little springform tin which is about 16 cm but I didn't reduce the quantities at all so that's why the cake is so high. It meant I had some leftover toffeed macadamias and caramel sauce, which I can assure you wasn't a bad thing. The toffeed macadamias are absolutely delicious and quite addictive.

Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers. I'll see you all again next week with another New York shopshoot so until then,

Jillian