Mahalabiya cheesecake with a pistachio base

It probably says something about the excitement of my life, but the other night whilst falling asleep an idea struck me -  Mahalabiya cheesecake...

Or more correctly, mahalabiya in the style of a cheesecake, with the malahabiya resting on a crunchy base. I know, sounds amazing doesn’t it?! I was sure that someone had made something like this before, but a quick search of Google didn’t seem to bring up any recipes. Had I invented something new? 

I am sure I haven’t and it’s already a ‘thing’ being made clandestinely and shared secretly... Anyway, some kitchen experimentation resulted and the initial results were rather good. I only had a large loose bottomed cake tin so had to use that. I had wondered if by using a large cake tin the mahalabiya would set, but it firmed up okay (I used a bit more cornflour that I usually would) and the finished dessert could be cut into slices, but as the tin was fairly shallow I felt that the ratio of mahalabiya to base wasn’t quite right, so after finding some mini deep cake tins I tried again. Wowsers!
The quantities below fill either one standard cake tin (with some base mixture left over for another day) or 2 10cm cake tins. 

For the base
100g pistachios
50g ground almonds
50g sugar
2 tablespoons orange blossom water
50g margarine or butter

For the mahalabiya
500ml milk
50g sugar
1 tsp ground mastic (optional)
5 tablespoons cornflour
3 tablespoons orange blossom water

1. Preheat the oven to 150C
2. Grind the pistachios and mix with the almonds and sugar.
3. Melt the margarine or butter and stir in, along with the orange blossom water and knead into a ball
4. Press the mixture into an oiled cake tin/s (for ease of removal one of the fancy ones with a removable bottom is ideal), you want it to be around 0.5cm thick.
5. Bake for around 10-15 minutes until it just starts to colour lightly, take out and allow to cool totally. It will seem quite soft when you take it out the oven, but will harden on standing
6. When the base is cool make the mahalabiya, when I made the test recipe I was impatient and added the hot mahalabiya to the hot base. Nothing bad happened, but the base stays a little crisper if you wait for it to cool
7. Pour a little milk into the cornflour and mix well until smooth, add the remainder of the milk to a pan with the sugar and bring to the boil
8. Once boiling whisk in the cornflour and milk mixture and the ground mastic (if using). At this point the milk will start to thicken, turn down the heat and keep stirring so no lumps form
9. Cook on a low heat for a few minutes and then take off the heat. Allow to cool slightly and stir in the orange blossom water. I didn’t want the mahalabiya to be too hot when I poured it onto the base, so I left it for a few minutes or so. It will thicken and start to set on standing so keep an eye on it as you want it to be pourable
10. Pour the mixture onto the base and allow to cool completely before refrigerating for a few hours
11. Serve sprinkled with chopped pistachios and rose syrup