Enjoy Cheesecake with a Gluten Free Nut Crust

Today is my husband’s birthday, and what he really wants is an orange cheesecake. We all love cheesecakes in our family, but the trick is how to make a gluten free crust. The usual graham cracker crust would be difficult, since I still haven’t found any premade GF ones on the market yet. I have a recipe for making them, but it seems a lot of work to mix, bake and then crush them and still have to make a cheesecake crust. I don’t like all that work. I’m kind of lazy that way.
Fortunately, I found a tasty and easier solution in making nut crusts. I can buy the nuts already finely ground. Then it’s just a matter of mixing them with sugar and an oil. I usually use canola oil instead of butter (since the butter would have to be melted anyway) in the hopes of offsetting the saturated fat content of all the cream cheese and eggs. Although olive oil is heart healthy, I wouldn’t use it for baking a dessert because of it’s strong flavor.
What kind of nuts I use depends on the type of cheesecake. The stronger flavor of pecans complement pumpkin and chocolate nicely. However, for fruit or mint cheesecakes, I prefer the lighter flavor of almond.

Here’s the recipe for a nut crust:

1-1/2 cups ground nuts
4 Tbs. canola oil
3 Tbs. sugar

Combine nuts, sugar and oil. Pat into the bottom and part of the sides of a spring-form pan and pour in your favorite cheesecake filling. Bake according to your cheesecake filling recipe.

If you can’t find finely ground nuts, you can toast whole nuts and grind them yourself. However, an easier option would be to let your cheesecake go naked—that is, crustless. This works out well for many cheesecake recipes, and has become popular with the carb-cutting crowd. Either way, going gluten free doesn’t mean the end of cheesecake!