FIG GINGER NUT CHEESECAKE

It’s good practice to write handover notes when you leave for a more or less significant period of time, even when flying eight hours behind and then back feels like you’ll only be gone for the night, and when the state of you in the limbo of the pre-departure is not too dissimilar to when you pour a cheesecake mixture into the tin before going to bed and think, duck knows if this will ever set.

To those who are left to spend the night time all by themselves in my absence (and to stare at the fridge like lunatics), I wish to pass on the following words of wisdom.
:

- If the thing doesn’t set, you can always have fig soup. Or just accept it’s a disaster (there’s beauty in every stumble), and start a baking blog about cheesecake disasters. It might take off, James says.

- Write stuff. If you’re too shy, invisible-write stuff.

- Masquerades are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t justify dressing up for the best part of twenty-five years just because it so happened that you forgot to take your costume off (you got there eventually).

- Royal Mail may also be a necessary evil, but even when they get confused and send your Italian dad’s parcel off to India (I’m known for not holding grudges), it doesn’t mean you are authorised to disrupt the continuum of space and time on the entire office floor shrieking like a banshee at customer service employees.

- Escape as and when deemed needed, but make sure you reserve every bit of your anxiety for what you’re escaping to.

- Foxes are underrated. Walk with them.

- Sit in cafes with the most serious expression in your repertoire and type on your laptop with the solemnity of manner you’d have when applying for a programme manager job. No one needs to know you are secretly creating cute animations out of hand-drawn badgers, photos of Birmingham and vintage trumpets.

- Five-storey buildings with a sinking-ship feel are not suitable for the emotionally unstable. Stick to orphanages, cafes in art galleries, edit suites and coffee shops that sell custard tarts whenever possible.

- Winter is cold. Summer can also be cold. Sometimes there is no summer. Wear jumpers; allow yourself to be hugged. This will keep you warm.

- Eat fried plantain, appreciate double entendres, and try not to demolish Persian cafes with your outstanding gracefulness, as this may result in getting banned from Peckham and sent back the other side of the river in eternal exile.

- Work is a sentence.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. Most times you wish they didn’t. But they can make for nice stories. Have your notebook ready.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. And right into place after that. Be astounded, smile.

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It would be nice if this was finally my journey to the end of the night; and if that’s the case for you, and someone’s enlightened notes help you make it through to the morning (even if it’s the darkest, rainiest Monday morning and your eyes are all puffy), you may also wake up to find that the cheesecake you made has set during the night.

That officially gives you the right to this wonderful thing known as, cake for breakfast; and it’s a sign that not all is lost.

I may be back in time for a slice, but bye for now.

FIG CHEESECAKE

with Ginger Nut crust

Crust:

250g (15oz) Ginger Nuts biscuits

1 teaspoon maple syrup

3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted

Filling:

250g (8.8oz) fresh figs

300g (1⅓ cup) soya yoghurt or other non-dairy yoghurt

90ml (1/3 cup) maple syrup

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

180ml (3/4 cup) soya milk or other non-dairy milk

2 tablespoons agar agar flakes

Fig drizzle:

1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted

2 fresh figs

Blitz the biscuits in a blender until roughly ground. Add maple syrup and coconut oil and keep going until you get a smooth paste. Place the mixture into a 20cm/8” cake tin, pressing it down evenly and firmly to cover the base. Transfer the tin to the fridge whilst you prepare the filling. 

Peel the figs and place in a blender with yoghurt, maple syrup and vanilla extract. Process until smooth then set aside.

Combine milk and agar agar flakes in a pan, then place on a medium heat and let the mixture simmer for about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, let cool slightly then pour in the fig mixture and stir until well combined.

Pour the filling over the biscuit crust and return to the fridge for at least 8 hours.
To make the topping, blitz coconut oil and figs in a blender until smooth, then drizzle over the cake with a spoon. Top with sliced figs and biscuit crumbs for prettiness.