Butterscotch Pecan Cheesecake

The second recipe to be made over this weekend was the Butterscotch Pecan Cheesecake, as picked by my Mother. She loves her pecans, as you can read from the Chocolate Chunk Pecan Pie, which I made when I was last down in Cornwall visiting them. Haven't made a cheesecake since June and still have four left after this one and was looking forward to tasting the butterscotch glaze, not eaten butterscotch since my school days.

Took all of Sunday to make this cheesecake, did it in stages throughout the day around our other plans. Made the digestive base first and the butter to biscuit ratio seemed fine in this recipe. Strange that it works perfectly for the cheesecakes but for the pie bases it is too sloppy. I only used greaseproof paper on the bottom of the tin, it worked so well the last time to give a smoother edge. Smoothed the base out and off it went to relax and chill out in the fridge.

Started work on the cheesecake filling. The majority of this is actually just Philadelphia cream cheese. My Mum and Nan were a little shocked at the amount used in one cheesecake and how small the other ingredient quantities are. It took me a little while to get the topping going. Usually once I start baking I am in the zone and focused. Not quite this time, I managed to measure out the cream cheese and sugar before got distracted and danced away to the Glee Thriller/Off with their heads remix and Beyonce's Single Ladies to make my baby girl laugh. Managed to get back to the mixing eventually and added the eggs and then blitzed the pecans in my amazing mini-blender that I love and then stirred them by hand and poured it all into the biscuit base to go into the oven.

Once it came out and was cooling, we all went out into town to do a little shopping. A couple of hours off baking and then straight back to it to make the butterscotch topping. It is mainly sugar, using two different types, the soft light brown and the icing varieties. It is mixed over a hob with butter, milk and a little vanilla essence until it thickens and is whisked into a glaze. It doesn't get set aside to cool, but rather is spread onto the chilled cheesecake straight away and then goes back into the fridge to chill for a few hours again. I usually leave mine overnight but everyone was eager to try some, especially as we were going out for a meal that evening and this was meant to be dessert.

We had a lovely meal at a sort of local pub, made it home not too late and but a very tired little girlie to bed. We then had a cuppa and cut into our cheesecake. It was scrummy. The pecans were chopped up very finely and so there weren't any big chunks in the filling so added nicely to the overall flavour without being too nutty. Everyone knows by now that I am not a nut enthusiast but Hummingbird is starting to change my mind about them in baking.