Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake

You gotta hand it to boredom, it makes you do something you normally won't. Just like doodling on a piece of paper led to oh, say, the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with his friend Peter Laird), doodling recipes in my mind led to this slightly outrageous creation - Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake.

Cashew nuts and biscuit base

Well, this dessert was not totally unfounded. I had leftovers that needed to be used up, and I didn't want to use them for anything that I normally do. There was half a dragonfruit from my scones session, some matcha powder from my churros post, half a packet of Digestives and a large jar of roasted cashew nuts left over from that day I cooked biryani rice and made my creamy pear-cashew sorbet. Oh, also a packet of cream cheese that I wanted to bake with but hadn't up to this point.

The mental doodle started with the cashews, condensed milk and matcha, three of my most favourite flavors in the world. The cheese was the anchor ingredient and made me think, okay, a cheesecake would be good. Then the visual part of my brain reasoned that I needed to brighten this dish up a little and what goes well with green? Yep, you guessed it, the ever dazzling fushia pink that dragonfruit provides! The hearts were originally supposed to be swirls on the green filling, but somehow I stopped swirling when I saw the much cuter hearts. Especially since they were fuschia pink hearts. Yeah.

Little fuschia hearts, for your sweetheart. Ask them to marry you, quick!

(Or if they already have, ask them to go with you on a romantic cruise, or out dancing ;-))

This cheesecake was surprisingly easy to make, and even easier to photograph! (No melting ice cream or precariously leaning food stacks, thank goodness). If you don't believe me, here's the recipe:

Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake
Ingredients:
Pastry base:
2 cups Graham crackers or Digestives, crumbed
2 cups cashew nuts, roasted and finely chopped
¾ cup butter, melted and cooled

Cheesecake filling:
1 packet (250g) Philadelphia cream cheese
1 ½ cups sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
½ small dragonfruit
1 tablespoon matcha powder

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/325F. Grease an 11-inch pie pan and set aside.

2. Prepare the pie base: Place cashew nuts in a food processor until finely chopped and pour into a bowl. Crumb the biscuits the same way, then add this to the bowl of cashew nuts. Add the cooled, melted butter and mix well. Press crumb mixture onto the bottom and sides of the pie pan. Chill for 15 minutes in the fridge.

3. For the filling: In another mixing bowl, whisk the cheese until smooth, then add the condensed milk. Mix until combined before adding the eggs one at a time.

4. In the meantime, peel, slice and puree the dragonfruit in a blender. Divide the cheese batter into two portions. In one bowl add the dragonfruit puree, and into the other add the matcha powder.

5. Reserve about 3 tablespoons of the dragonfruit cheese batter for the hearts decoration. Pour the rest of this red batter onto the base of the pie dough and bake for 20-25 minutes until the top is slightly firm to the touch.

6. Take the pie tin out of the oven and carefully pour the matcha cheese batter on top of the dragonfruit layer.

7. Drop little dots of the extra dragonfruit mix on the matcha layer and run a knife through each of them to form little hearts and swirls.

8. Place it back in the oven and bake further for 25 minutes until a rod inserted into the centre of the pie comes out clean.

9. Let it cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.
PS. The bottom dragonfruit layer turned an orangey-pink color upon cooking, probably because it was in the heat for too long. The dragonfruit hearts on the top, meanwhile, retained their fuschia color. So strange, this cooking business!

My Way With Pear Pt. 2 - Pear and Cashew Cream Sorbet

Remember this beautiful pear? Well, the fantasy continues. For my second pear recipe installment, I decided to make a lovely, tangy pear-lime sorbet. But wait, I say "sorbet" quite liberally here because after I threw in the roasted cashew nuts into the mix, the texture of this frozen dish turned cream-like. So I'm not quite sure if there's ever such a thing as a creamy sorbet, but  here it is. It's naturally sweetened, and melts lingeringly on the tongue (or, in my case, on the dish, in the bright sunlight).

On their own, the pear and cashew flavors are fairly subtle. This is where the lime came into play, because the tanginess of the citrus somehow enhances the sweet-tartness of the pear and the sweet-creaminess of the cashew nuts. Don't ask me how, it just does.

Pear and Cashew Cream Sorbet
Ingredients:
2 Forelle pears
1-2 large limes, squeezed
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup water
1 cup cashew nuts, unsalted and roasted

Method:

1. Peel, core and slice pears, place in the water and honey in a pan and poach for 10-15 minutes until the pears are soft. Leave to cool completely.

2. When cool, pour pears and poaching liquid into a food processor, add the lime juice and cashew nuts and blend until the nuts are finely ground.

3. Freeze in an ice cream maker, or if you don't have one, just freeze the mixture for an hour in a suitable, covered container. When the ice crystals start to form, scrape down the sides and blend again until smooth. Repeat this process two more times over the next 2-3 hours, then leave to freeze for 4 hours or overnight.

4. Serve on its own or with some thinly sliced pears soaked briefly in salted water.

I used small jelly molds to shape the sorbet. It was less messier to serve up and didn't melt as quickly!