Kumara Cream Cheese Pie

Every Friday, I am just in a baking mood.  Maybe it is because end of the work week, the feeling is good without having to think of work for the next 2 days. 

Hooray.... today it's Friday again and it has been a long week being home alone and Tony will be back from Australia tomorrow. Perhap, it will be a good idea to have some dessert to welcome Tony home after a long  business trip. I wanted  to bake a Kumara Cream Cheese Pie...by putting together 2 recipes. Saw a Kumara Cheesecake recipe but this does not have any pie crust. Tony and I love  pastry crust. Thinking to myself, it might be work out well by putting a crust base for the Kumara Cheesecake recipe. Here I go, experimenting again...it turned out to be unexpectally good (except I forgot about the time and overbake it slightly).

ShortCrust Pastry Recipe adapted from Taste.com.au and Kumara Cream Cheese Filling  recipe adapted from Wikihow.com , I experimented it by putting these 2 recipes together to make Kumara Cream Cheese Pie.

Serving: Make 1 pie (Using 21cm Baking Tin)

Ingredients:

Short Crust Pastry
1 1/2 Cups (250g) Plain Flour
125g Butter, chilled and chopped
1/3 Cup Caster Sugar
1 Egg yolk
1 Tablespoon Chilled Water

Kumara Filling
400g Kumara
1 Lemon
150g Sugar
250g Cream Cheese
3 Eggs

1. Combine flour, butter and sugar in a food processor. Process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add yolk and chilled water. Process until dough just comes together.

Turn pastry onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until just smooth. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

2.Peel and wash the kumara. Cut into small chunks and boil. When soft, remove from the heat.

3.Wash the lemon and grate its zest. Put to one side. Squeeze the juice from the lemon into a small bowl.

4.Put the kumara and sugar into a food processor. Pour the lemon juice over the top. Pulse and reduce the ingredients to a paste consistency.
5. Add the cream cheese and pulse until it is mixed into the paste.
6. Add the eggs, one after the other, and process into the paste using the lowest processor setting.
7. Remove from the processor and fold in the lemon zest.
 

8. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Prepare the baking tin by cutting the baking paper that is bigger than the base (about 34cm by 34cm) . You will be rolling out the dough on the baking paper so that you can lift up the baking paper with dough and  to put into the baking tin.  Grease the sides with butter, or use a spray-on oil.

9. Take out the dough from the fridge.  Lightly floured the rolling pin, roll out the dough on the pre prepared baking paper. Roll out the dought to a pie size of 30cm in diameter so that it will give you the height so that the kumara mixture can go into the pie shell. 
 

10.Put the pie pastry together with the baking paper into the baking tin (as above).
11.Pour the kumara mixture into the pie shell and smooth evenly.

12.Put into the oven to bake for 40-50 minutes. Or, bake until pie crust is golden.

13. Remove the pie from the baking pin and cool in on a wire rack. It should be chilled prior to serving. Enjoy!