Baked cheesecake with almond biscuit base

Baked cheesecake was a firm favourite of mine till I went wheatless. I hadn't tried baking any cake/pie base/crust using nut flours as I wasn't entirely sure how it would work out. After making several batches of chocolate chip cookies using almond flour with great success, I felt confident enough to give making a wheatless cheesecake base a go. So this experiment is really about the base.

Ingredients

Base
2 ¼ C almond flour 
2 tsp Muscovado sugar
¼ tsp Himalayan rose pink salt (fine)
8 tbsp coconut oil, melted 

Cheesecake
450g Philadelphia Cream Cheese, room temp
½ C organic sour cream + ½ C organic blueberry Greek yoghurt, room temp (1 C organic sour cream)
4 large free-range eggs, room temp
4 tsp dark Muscovado sugar
¼ C organic honey
zest of 1 lime/lemon

Method for the crust

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C and take out a 9" springform pan or round silicone pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix the almond flour, sugar, and salt together with a spatula. Make sure to break up the sugar.
3. Add the melted coconut oil in batches to the flour mix and mix with a spatula until combined, scraping down the edges of the bowl so it is all uniform. The dough should be a crumbly texture.
4. Add the dough to the springform/silicon pan and press the crust down firmly (with hand or pan turner) until it is evenly covering the bottom and pressed firmly into the pan.
5. Bake for 20 minutes until the edges of the crust are golden brown.
6. Let the crust cool and then put in the freezer for 1 hour. The crust needs to be completely cooled before adding in the cheesecake filling.

Method for the cheesecake

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the cream cheese and sour cream/yoghurt and, using an electric mixer, pulse a few times to start to mix them together.
3. Add the eggs one at a time to the cheese mix and whisk to combine thoroughly till smooth. Make sure the eggs are beaten well so they don't separate during baking.
4. Add the sugar and honey and whisk for 1 minute until thoroughly combined and smooth.
5. Mix in the lime zest.
6. Pour the filling into the cooled crust. 
7. Bake the cheesecake in a water bath to ensure even cooking. A water bath prevents the outside of the cake from burning while cooking the inside. (If using a springform pan, to prepare a water bath for the cheesecake, cover the outside of the springform pan with 2-3 layers of aluminum foil. It keeps the water out of the pan.)
8. Find a casserole dish or baking tray that fits the pan in it. Put the pan in the dish/tray and fill the dish/tray with about 1 inch of water.
9. Very carefully put the cheesecake in the oven for 60-70 minutes until the cheesecake is golden colour. When the cake is done, it won't move when you jiggle the pan.
10. Take the cake out of the oven with great caution because the water bath is very hot. Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and let it cool on the counter.
11. Once it's cooled, refrigerate for 8-24 hours before serving.
12. Keep in the fridge and let it return to room temperature before serving.

Overall it was a hit. The almond biscuit base was wonderfully nutty and had a good texture, which I felt was helped by chilling it in the freezer before pouring in the cream cheese filling. A few notes still:

1. Initially I was worried that ¼ tsp of salt would be too much, and indeed the biscuit had a salty bite to it, but it actually worked very well against the sweetness of the Muscovado and honey.
2. I wonder if I could get away with 1-2 tsp less of coconut oil for the base.
3. I didn't think the cream cheese was cheesy enough. I'm not sure if this is a portion issue or a product one. Next time I could either increase the amount of cream cheese from 450g to 550g or use ricotta or mascarpone (and make it more Italian!).
4. I'm also not sure I quite have the ratio of biscuit and cheese right. Generally speaking, I don't like biscuit bases much (even when I ate wheat, I would often only eat half of the base but polish off the entire filling, whatever the cake/pie). Because the silicone pan I have/use is rather shallow, the cheesecake didn't have much of a height. As it stood, the base-to-filling ratio was approximately 1:1.5. Husband didn't have a problem with it as he likes biscuits, but I'd like to try out a 1:2 base-to-filling ratio. 
5. Once I sort out the base and filling, toppings are the next step. Some flavours I'd like to try: blueberry, passion fruit, fig, gooseberry.