Pear and Chocolate Cheescake

* recipe adopted from Gordon Ramsay's "Christmas with Gordon"

Ingredients:

Poached Pears
2 large pears
50g caster sugar
100ml water
1 vanilla pod

Base:
150g digestive biscuits
50g unslated butter
2 tbsp Nutella spread

Filling:
300g Philadelphia cheese
125g caster sugar
100ml whipping cream
3 tbsp amaretto liquer
100g amaretti biscuits - lightly crushed
To decorate:
120g good quality dark chocolate
icing sugar, to dust

How to Make:

1. Prepare the poach pear first as the poached pears need to be cooled down before further use. Peel, quarter and core the pears, then cut into 1cm dice.

2. Dissolve sugar in the water in a small saucepan over low heat.

3. Split the vanilla pod, scrape the seeds into a bowl for later use. Add the pod (with seeds already discarded) into the above saucepan and simmer with the syrup for a few minutes to infuse.

4. Add the diced pears and poach gently for about 3 minutes. Drain and leave the pears to cool. (once they are no longer hot, i suggest to further cool down in the fridge).

5. For the cheesecake base, crush all digestive biscuits in a zip lock bag using a roller pin lined with a cloth on top until they become fine crumbs. Melt the butter in a small pan and stir in the Nutella spread. Mix the biscuits crumbs with the butter nutella mixture and spread evenly over the base of a 23-24cm springform cake tin, press down lightly. Chill this cake base in tin for at least 20 minutes in frdige until set.

6. For the filling, mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla seeds together using an electric whisk until well blended. Add the whipping cream and the liquer and mix well. Fold in the crushed amaretti biscuits and the poached pears (which are cool already) and mix well.

7. Pour the cheese mixture onto the cake tin over the digestive biscuits base and level the surface. Chill for 30 min to 1 hr until set.

8. For the decoration, grate the bitter chocolate using a potato grater, then spread them on top of cake, then finish by dusting some icing sugar on top.

** this cheesecake recipe is unlike my traditional cheesecake recipe as the filling is quite soft and runny. But it does have a very nice taste and fragrance of pears and almonds!

** if you are using japanese pears, i suggest you to poach the pears without any sugar as they should be sweet enough themselves!

Enjoy!