In America, when we think of cheesecake, we usually think of New York Style cheesecake, which uses a cream cheese filling and a graham cracker crust. In other parts of the world, Cheesecake may incorporate cottage cheese ricotta, or other soft cheeses baked im a pie crust or phyllo dough. This recipe combines the best of all worlds, with a buttery shortbread cookie crust, creamy ricotta interior, fresh roasted pumpkin and warm spices.

Biscuits – from the Latin biscoctus, meaning “twice-cooked”– go back at least as far as the 1500s. The first biscuits were made from three basic ingredients – flour, water and salt – and cooked until they were hard, dry and tasteless. These compact bricks of bread, which the British called hardtack, were given as rations to soldiers and sailors because they could travel the world without spoiling.