Sunday, October 23, 2011

it's that time of the year...

I love fall.. almost as much as I love winter... what I love about fall is the scents and smells ... the cooler weather... leaves changing color and falling to be made into piles for jumping.. ahh.. wonderful childhood memories for sure...
What I also love about fall is pumpkin.. I love carving them.. I love roasting the seeds.. I love cooking them down for freezing to be used at a later date.. I prefer the baking method as to the peeling, chopping, boiling on top of the stove method.
Cut the pumpkin open, remove the seeds to be cleaned and baked later, cut the flesh into 2 or 3 chunks, place on broiler pan and bake 300ยบ until the pumpkin is soft. Cool then remove the flesh from the skin. I zip mine through the food processor to make it nice and smooth.
Using pumpkin I've frozen.. I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake... it smells devine! I hope it tastes as good.
I made a couple last year.. and gave them away after having a slice.. I'm pretty sure this will be the case with today's baking as well.. we'll see.

This is the recipe I used.. with a few changes.. of course!

Cheesecake Factory Pumpkin Cheesecake
Originally posted to recipelink.com by Elly, Ohio:



Crust:

1 1/2 cups graham crumbs

5 Tbsp. butter, melted

1 Tbsp. sugar

Filling:

3- 8oz.pkgs. cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup canned pumpkin

3 eggs

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. allspice

Whipped Cream


Mix crust ingredients together, just till coated and crumbly. Press onto the bottom and 2/3 up the sides of an 8" springform pan. Bake for 5 min. at 350. Set aside.


Combine cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl, mix until smooth with an electric mixer. add pumpkin eggs, and spices, beat till smooth and creamy. Pour into the crust. Bake for 60-70 min. or till the top turns a bit darker. Remove from oven and allow to come to room temperature, then refrigerate. After it has thoroughly chilled, remove the pan sides and cut. Serve with whipped cream.





I used a mixture of half ginger snaps and half graham crackers. I like the ginger snap crust but found it to be a bit too gingery last year. Of course, the recipe above says nothing about ginger snaps.. that's change #1




















After the pumpkin thawed *change #2* I put it in a sifter to drain the excess water. I also used a bit more than the recipe calls for because I think this doesn't have the concentrated taste of canned pumpkin. *Change #3 was to leave out allspice... I didn't have any*
I don't know about you but I love the challenge of scraping every single bit that I can from my mixer bowl. I can only do this of course when there are no grandkids around *except with this batter.. I'm not sure they would enjoy it*...

I can't wait to enjoy a slice of this with homemade whipped cream... yes, I'm going to attempt to use my whip cream dispenser again. The last time I did it was with disasterous results. Funny to those of us the cream didn't get all over.. but not so funny for Shelly.. wish I could find that picture... haha

Next up.. Homemade peppermint mocha creamer..

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