Eggnog Cheesecake

This was a challenge that a friend from work put to me. She said she had seen a picture of a cake like this online and it looked tasty. So I set out to make one. I took a look at 3 or 4 similar recipes and tinkered to make it a little easier and more her taste. I used rum in place of the extract. I was quite liberal with the 1 tbsp because I think it adds a nice punch, I used good dark spiced rum from Turks and Caicos.

For the Crust:

1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup white sugar
6 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp ginger
-you could use fresh or powdered. If you use fresh, you don't need as much, but powdered you might want more if you really want that finer flavour.
1/2 tbsp cinnamon

For the Filling:

4 (8 oz.) packages softened cream cheese

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups egg nog

1 1/4 cups white sugar

3 tbsp AP flour

1 tbsp rum

1 tsp cinnamon 

The Crust:
Assemble the crust ingredients in a bowl and mix well, then dump the contents into a greased, parchment bottom lined spring form pan.
I was taught by my mother in law that if you have a tall, straight, smooth glass or vase in the house you can use it to press the crumbs to the side of the pan and it looks a lot cleaner than using your hands. If you make sure the crumbs are pressed down well and into the sides well, the whole cake stays together a lot better and looks cleaner too.

The Filling:
In your Kitchen Aid with the whisk attachment whip the cream cheese until fluffy. My poor machine hates me already from all the Christmas baking, but this make it very warm indeed.
Add the eggs one at a time and scraping down the sides and bottom after each egg.
Add in the egg nog and the rum and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides again.
Mix together the flour, sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and add slowly into the cream cheese mixture and whip until smooth again.
Make sure you have no lumps that haven't been incorporated into a smooth mixture. You want a nice uniform mixture when you pour it into the crust.
Carefully pour the cream cheese mixture into the crust, set on a baking tin and put into a 325 degree oven for an hour.
Once the hour is up, leave the cake in the oven, open the oven door a crack and leave it another hour.
Move to a cooling rack to come to room temperature.
Cover and put into the fridge to chill overnight.
At this point, I had actually frozen the cheesecake because I used the "big outside fridge" (aka outside in winter).
I whipped a pint of whipping cream and added just a little sugar to take the bite out of it.
I decorated the edges with rosettes, with one large rosette in the middle and dusted with a little cinnamon to make it pretty.