As well as celebrating Christmas, we also celebrated my beautiful mother-in-law’s birthday who is born on Christmas Day. I feel for all those people who are born on Christmas Day or around it.

She said she likes pecans so I searched for a recipe to make and found this Spicy Sweet Potato Cheesecake recipe in The Ultimate Book of Vegetables published by Reader’s Digest. I had a singing candle to pop in the cake and we sang her happy birthday. She loved it and said it was a wonderful birthday celebration!

It was a bit of an effort to put together but well worth the taste of pecans and ginger.

Ingredients

• 1 large orange sweet potato (750g) peeled, cut into 2cm chunks
• 1/4 cup (60ml) canola oil
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2/3 cup (140g) soft brown sugar
• 2 cups (240g) roughly chopped pecans [I only had 180g and this was fine]
• 1/2 cup (75g) plain or wholemeal flour
• 1/2 cup (60g) rolled oats [I swapped for some instant oats I needed to use up]
• 1/4 cup crystallised ginger
• 75g butter, chilled, diced
• 250g cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup maple syrup

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray and 23cm springform cake tin with baking parchment paper.
2. Toss sweet potato and oil in a large bowl to coat. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and toss to coat. Spread on prepared baking tray. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until soft. Cool.
3. In the same bowl, combine 1/3 cup (70g) sugar and 1½ (180g or if you’re using less – 130g) pecans. Add a little oil, if needed, to moisten. Set aside.
4. In a food processor or blender, process remaining sugar, pecans, flour, oats and ginger until finely ground. Add butter and process until just combined. Press mixture firmly into a springform tin to cover base and 2 cm up sides. Bake 10 minutes. [I cooked for about 25-30 minutes]
5. Meanwhile, wipe out food processor. Add sweet potato mixture and cream cheese and purée until . Add eggs and maple syrup and blend until well combined. Pour over base and bake 30 minutes. Tip pecan mixture over cheesecake [I found I had more mixture than room in my tin], reduce oven to 150ºC and bake a further 30 minutes, or until set refrigerate at least 2 hours.