MANOURI, THYME HONEY & DRIED FIGS CHEESECAKE

Using Manouri instead of the typical store-bought cream cheese makes a very different dessert with a rich, slightly more dense cream, with moreish sweet & salty undertones.

Dried fruit & Manouri cheese work well together and the use of figs here adds an earthy caramelised taste in the biscuit base without making the dessert too sweet.

Ingredients

250g digestive biscuits

120g unsalted butter, melted

100g dried figs, chopped

2 packs of Odysea Manouri Cheese PDO at room temperature

340ml double cream

50g icing sugar

1 tsp of vanilla essence

Odysea Wild Thyme & Fragrant Herb Honey for decoration

Instructions

  1. Crush the biscuits in a food processor then transfer to a large bowl and mix with the chopped figs.
  2. Mix to combine and add the melted butter.
  3. Put the biscuit mix in the bottom of your pan and press it down to form the base of your cheesecake. Place in the fridge to set for at least 30 min.
  4. For the manouri cheese cream; place the manouri in a large bowl and mash it with a fork then add the double cream, vanilla essence and icing sugar and with the help of a handheld mixer combine to get a smooth, buttery mixture.
  5. Take the biscuit base out of the fridge and smooth the manouri cheese mix ontop
  6. Allow the cheesecake to set in the fridge for at least 5 hours.
  7. Decorate with preserved figs and a drizzle of honey.

To finish, we drizzled our cheescake with Wild Thyme & Herb Honey & scattered more chopped dried figs but there’s no reason you cannot spread the top with Morello Cherry Whole Fruit Preserve for a more classic finish.