This time of year is so exciting, not only do the days get chillier and the colours go all pretty, we get to cook with everything Pumpkin Spiced, like this utterly delicious Vegan Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake with Toffee Sauce!
Pumpkins and squashes are some of our favourite veggies. Not only are they beautiful to look at, coming in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes and sizes, they are super delicious and lend themselves to both sweet and savoury cooking.
We've already got loads of savoury pumpkin and squash dishes on our blog, so just in time for Halloween and thanksgiving, we have the perfect dessert. You’ve all seen pumpkin pie before, but this is something different, with all the flavours, with the added twist of being a vegan cheescake.
We LOVE this dish so much- and gobbled it up as soon as we had taken the photos - we even fought over the toffee sauce drizzle.
Seriously. Fought. With Spoons. It's THAT good.
Cheesecake has always been a dessert favourite of mine – I find the crunch of the biscuit base and creaminess of the filling totally irresistible. I love how you can change the flavours according to the season and your mood. I also love how you can make this as one whole cheesecake, in ramekins or even using muffin tins. Just be aware that the more and smaller the cheesecakes, the less cooking time they will need.
The crust in this recipe uses mixed nuts, which contrast deliciously with the pumpkin and spices. The cheesecake filling is very simple to make as all the ingredients just need to be blended up. It is easiest to use pumpkin puree from a tin, but you can also make pumpkin puree by baking it and blending the flesh.
This cheesecake is packed full of autumn and winter spices and is what makes this dish like a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, but in cheesecake form. We’ve chosen ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon. Feel free to change up the amounts of each spice depending on your tastes.
We found that once the cheesecake mixture is blended up it goes quite a dark brown colour. However, once baked, it turns a lovely orange-golden colour. So don’t worry if you’re mixture is looking a little on the dull side, it will all be beautiful when it comes out of the oven.
About the Vegan Toffee Sauce:
Can we take a minute to talk about the toffee sauce drizzl OMG- it's so moreish, thick and sweet! This has just two ingredients (brown
sugar / coconut palm sugar and coconut milk), and doesn’t require any margarine. Depending on how long you cook it, you can make it a bit thicker (cooking for longer) or runnier (cooking for less time). The Toffee sauce can be used as a drizzle for other desserts too, however, we highly doubt you’ll have any leftover!
Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake with Toffee Sauce
Ingredients
For the Crust
- 60 g oats use gluten free if desired
- 65 g mixed nuts mix of almonds, walnuts, pecans and brazil nuts
- 25 g coconut palm sugar / caster sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- 20 g milled linseed
- 40 g coconut oil melted
For the Filling
- 1.5 cups 180g cashews (soaked in hot water for an hour, then drained)
- 100 g coconut milk full fat from a tin
- 4 tbsp arrowroot starch / cornstarch / tapioca starch
- 1 pack 300g silken tofu silken tofu usually comes in a tetra pack
- 90 g coconut palm sugar
- 200 g pumpkin puree around half a tin
- 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
- 2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 4 tsp cinnamon
- 4 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp allspice
For the Toffee Sauce Drizzle
- 150 g coconut palm sugar / brown sugar
- 1 tin full fat coconut milk 400ml
Instructions
For the Crust
- Make the crust by blending together all dry ingredients. You want a bread crumb consistency
- Once blended, add the melted coconut oil.
- Press the crust into pre-greased small or large pie tins. Try and use ones with a removable base.
- Bake the crust in the oven for 7 minutes. Once done, leave out to cool.
For the Cheesecake Filling
- To make the filling, blend all filling ingredients until smooth.
- Pour filling mix over the crusts and smooth out.
- Bake cheesecakes in oven for around 25-30 minutes, until top of cheesecake is firm. You may need to adjust the timing depending on how small the cheesecake ramekins are (the smaller the size, the less time the cheesecakes will need to cook).
- To serve, drizzle with ample toffee sauce!
To Make the Toffee Drizzle
- Place sugar and coconut milk in a heavy-based saucepan. Stirring or whisking continuously, bring to the boil on a medium heat. Once boiled, turn down the heat.
- Let the sugar and coconut milk thicken on this low heat, stirring or whisking as much as possible. This may take around 10-15 minutes. It will be ready when it is a caramel consistency. If you want it to be thicker, boil for longer to let more liquid evaporate.
- Once it is cooled, it can be stored in an airtight container or jar in the fridge (if it doesn’t get eaten immediately!).
Yum ??