Pumpkin and vanilla bean cheesecake & Almond puff pastry tart

 This post is a little different from my usual, not only does it contain 2 fabulous recipes: a pumpkin vanilla bean cheesecake and a ridiculously light and puffy almond puff pastry tart (or if you're feeling fancy, it's called Galette des Rois) but I'm also going to be getting a little tech-savvy (wow, I sound a bit like my grandmother there!)

It took me a while to catch on, but I've developed a bit of an app addiction. Both my tablet and phone are littered with cooking and baking apps and there seems to be one for everything! From an app that can tell you if the fish you're eating is endangered or not (WWF SASSI), an extremely versatile baking converter (QuickBake Converter), one that grabs recipes off your favourite blogs and saves them as recipe cards (ChefTap) to an app that transforms your Instragrams and tweets of restaurant meals into food for disadvantaged and hungry children (Feedie). 

But my absolute favourite at the moment has got to be the Food and Home Entertaining magazine app which has hands-down got to be the most beautiful app on my homepage. Not only is it pretty but it's also pretty useful with videos and a cook mode which goes through the recipe step-by-step so you can follow it on your tablet while you bake. 

 

I tried the pumpkin and vanilla cheesecake recipe because the spiced pumpkin reminded me so much of how my grandmother used to prepare her pumpkin fritters. This cheesecake was lovely and dense and I'll definitely be adding it to my recipe collection.  

KATE'S TIP:  I served mine with a butterscotch sauce and toasted almonds (having a sweet tooth and all).

The puff pastry tart is also so yummy and quite impressive! So if you're baking this long weekend (that's a silly thing to say isn't it? Of course you are!) give either of them a try!

For the recipes for these beautiful bakes download the app here for free.