What dessert should you make for New Year Eve or Day dinner to share with family? New Year 2023 is a year of saying to the world let there be Love, Peace and Joy as we celebrate it with Hope for and a view to more positive views.

I know Baklava uses filo pastries with pistachios. Relabbed +Rita Dolcie: Baklava cheesecake with a bit of me: replaced pistachios with sticky dates. Note: I don’t have the link anymore, you can look it up on google yourself. This is from Google+ which has shut down.

Baklava cheesecake with additional creative: experimenting making heart shapes chocolates with Love, Peace, Joy and Hope to tell my family and friends and anyone that Love begins with ourselves; with that Peace, Joy and Hope followed us into the year 2023 in abundant.

This cake is moist, delicious and creative from my heart. I don’t have to be expert bakers. I bake with all of my heart. So, cheesecake lovers here’s a cake you would not miss eating. Let’s get baking!!!!

This recipe uses 23 cm spring form.

Ingredients

For white and dark chocolates:

80 g dark cooking chocolates broken into pieces
1 Tsp truffle infused oil
280 g white melting chocolates
100 ml thicken cream
1 Tbs olive oil

For the base and sides of Baklava:

12-14 filo pastry sheets (depending on the size of the sheets)
180 g melted unsalted butter

For sticky dates filling:

100 g chopped sticky dates
80 ml water
1/4 Tsp bicarb soda
4 Tbs treacle syrup

For the cheesecake filling:

600 g cream cheese at room temperature
200 ml thickened cream
3 large eggs
300 ml sour cream
150 g castor sugar
80 g corn flour
150 g plain flour
pinch of salt
1/4 Tsp cinnamon (opt)
4 Tbs of glucose syrup

For decorations:

3 Strawberries, plus 1 punnet to serve with cake
half handful pepitas plus some extra to serve with cake
half handful craisin plus some extra to serve with cake

Method

Melt dark chocolate in microwave 5 times for 15-20 seconds; stir each time until completely melted. Then add truffle oil and gives a stir and set to cool before spooning into the heart shapes mould. Next place in freezer for 2 hours to set, then removed from freezer to thaw on bench top about 15-20 minutes so that easy to unmould. Place them in a container and back into fridge until needed.

For the white chocolate microwave 3 times for 15-20 seconds, stir each time until completely melted. Add thicken cream and oil, stir to mix well and set aside to cool. Then spoon in the heart shapes mould. Place in freezer for 4 hours to set, removed to fridge so later easy to unmould them. I left them in the mould until I am ready to use.

Preheat oven 180 degrees C. Grease the springform pan. You will need to brush each filo sheet with lots of melted butter. I cut two filo pastries using the base of my pan to have 2 circles (though it’s not a nice circle with a little crack or torn but try make it; do to fit); butter them and place them in the middle.

Note: Take two filo out the rest cover with a damp cloth and place in fridge until needed.

The others folded in triangle shapes, leave some hanging on the sides of the pan as you go on cover the rest of the pan to have a strong base to hold cheesecake filling.

Bake in a preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until light golden brown. (Oven temperature vary). You might need only 15 minutes.

Meanwhile cook dates and water about 3-4 minutes. Once dates have softened a bit add bicarb. Stir and add treacle until you get a spreadable paste. Remove from hob to cool. Spread it over baked and cooled filo pastry bowl and set aside.

Beat cream cheese on a low speed for 5 minutes. Then add sugar, sour cream, thicken cream, cinnamon, salt, syrup, corn flour, and mix again until well blended with no lumps.

Add eggs one at a time beating well and flour little by little keep mixing on a low speed and scrap the sides of the bowl from time to time until you get a good batter consistency, and all the ingredients are combined, pour the batter into filo and dates bowl. Turn temperature down to 160 degrees C and bake for 1 hour.

I put a pan at the bottom shelf in the oven and fill it with luke-warm water then place the cheesecake pan over a cookie tray and put both on top the water filled pan to get a steamy room for cheesecake to cooked through.

Turn off the oven after 1 hour. Gently shake cookies tray; make sure middle is a bit wobbly and leave in the oven with door close for another 35 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cake cool completely. Touch pan if cooled enough, removed pan and place in airtight cake container before putting overnight in fridge to set further.

Just before serving decorate with white and dark chocolate heart shapes, strawberries, craisin and pepitas or to your liking. Serve the Baklava with Turkish apple tea or dessert wine. Bon Appetit!!!!

Note: Most of my cheesecakes uses bain-marie method; this time I tried +Rita Dolcie method. It works well and save me heap on using foil to wrap the pan and certainly did prevent water from getting in. This is absolutely best method.

https://helenscchin.com/2018/12/29/baklava-cheesecake-with-white-and-dark-chocolates-heart-shapes/

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