'Hello November' Strawberry and White Chocolate Cheesecake.

Hello. Apologies for the lack of seasonality I have for you today. You see I felt it was time to properly let go of summer so I could get on with embracing Autumn's lovelyness. So here we have a sort of final farewell to hopes of summer times.

I'm usually quite grumpy towards the dark seasons but these last few days have just been such perfect Autumn days; all crisp and bright and egg yolk orange, that it was hard to be annoyed at it. I think Edinburgh is at its best in sunny Autumn. It makes me want to live there in a ginormous Georgian town house even more that normal.

So as a sort of 'Hello November' ritual I defrosted my last stash of strawberries and made a rather summery dessert- a rather summery, rather delicious cheesecake.

(LOOK at this lovely little vase, it's so teenytiny...a hand me down from Nana Jean).

I realise that you might not have a strawberry stash but I thought you'd like to see the cake anyway so you could vicariously do some summer farewell-ing yourself, or maybe you could stash the recipe for next year. Happy Autumn, I'm off to kick some leaves and make dragon breath. With Love and Cake.

Strawberry and White Chocolate Cheesecake

Adapted from 'One More Slice' by Leila Lindholm

A few notes:

• I baked my base before adding the topping but I don't think this is necessary, that and the huge amounts of butter the recipe asked for made for a bit of a disappointing bisciut layer to be honest, so I've made tweaks so you get a good one.
• Definitelydefinitely only eat this after a night in the fridge, the cake that is not you. It's worth the wait.
• Because my strawbs came out the freezer they made loads of juice before I even squished them. I boiled it all up with some sugar to make a syrup to serve with the cheesecake. If you don't have much juice just pop it in the freezer and I'll tell you what to do with it some day sooooooon.

Makes 1 large cake

You will need

a 23cm cake tin, greased

70g butter, melted

300g digestives

100g caster sugar + 1 tbsp extra

600g cream cheese, at room temperature

250ml quark cheese (you find it in the cheese aisle)

1 big splodge vanilla extract

50g cornflour

3 eggs

100ml double cream

200g white chocolate

400g strawberries

• Preheat your oven to 180°c .
• Crush your biscuits to sand in a food processor (or by hand with the end of a rolling pin in you've got loooads of patients) and whizz (stir) in the butter.
• Press in to the bottom of your cake tin and leave to set in the fridge while you get on with the filling.
• Squash the strawberries up a bit with the 1 tbsp sugar and leave to drain through a seive while you mix the rest of the base.
• Beat together the 2 cheeses in a large bowl until smooth and creamy, then stir in the 100g sugar, cornflour and eggs, one at a time.
• Finally add the cream and give everything a good stir to combine.
• Melt the white chocolate either veryVERY gently in a microwave or in a bowl over barely simmering water.
• Fold the chocolate through the creamy cheese mixture followed by the strawberry pulp.
• Pour everything over the base and bake for 45 minutes until the top is slightly golden and there is just a hint of wibblewobble. If you check it and it's getting too brown too fast, pop some foil over it.
• Turn off the oven and leave the cake inside to cool without the top cracking.
• Eat remembering summer fun and looking forward to cosy winter times.