Once again, it has been a while. I received an email from my cousin and dear friend today saying that she was about to give up checking my blog because I may never write again! That was motive enough. Poor excuses to follow; long working hours, not home for dinner, nothing of interest to write about......
It is Thanksgiving this weekend and I am going to Megan's for a potluck dinner which she and I basically had planned weeks ago and have been looking forward to ever since! Needless to say there will be a full report on the actual dinner itself, but for now, a little on what I have been working on in anticipation of it.
Dessert has to be pumpkin related that goes without question. Tis the season. And while the typical pumpkin pie is tempting, I decided to try out a pumpkin cheese cake. A quick Google search brought up a multitude of options so I browsed through them all and came up with a mish-mash recipe that had all the things that sounded good to me.
For the crust I found a packet of ginger snap biscuits (cookies) that had cinnamon in them, they were called Spice Snaps I think. I put 3/4 of the packet in a ziplock bag and beat it with my rolling pin and then rolled it with the rolling pin to turn the cookies into crumbs. I did the same with some pecans, aiming for a total of about 2 1/2 cups of dry ingredient. My cheese cake tin is slightly bigger than the usual one so I had to try and beef up the recipes so that they wouldn't look pathetic at the bottom of my pan. The usual recipe used 1/3cup of melted butter in the crust, I used slighlty more because I was using more crumb matter. I mixed it together and pressed it into the tin and baked it at 350 for 10minutes then let it cool.
I had let 2 tubs (400g each) of cream cheese warm to room temperature for a while so that they would beat nicely. The recipes used pumpkin puree and because I had left it so late there was none to be found and I had to settle for pumpkin pie filler, which is already sweetened. This meant using less sugar in the mixture as it was already half way there. I like the idea of maple with pumpkin so I used some maple syrup and a tiny bit of brown sugar to help it along the way. The recipes used 3 eggs but my eggs were small and I used a little more filling than usual too so I used 4 eggs. I think 3 would be fine. So, beat the cream cheese, sugar, maple syrup, vanilla essence together and add the pumpkin, half a can, which is about a cup. Then you beat in the eggs one at a time. I had also let the eggs warm to room temperature as they are easier to work with like that.
One of the recipes did some fancy marbelling thing with half the mix plain and the other half with the pumpkin so it swirled cream and orange coloured. I put pumpkin in it all and then added even more pumpkin (another half cup roughly) to the last cup of mix to make it richer in flavour. My marbelling skills were not up to par but you could tell there were 2 parts to it at least.
The cheese cake baked at 350 for 55minutes. I had a dish with water in the oven at the same time to keep the air moist in an effort to stop it from cracking. Note 'effort'. There were still some cracks but not too bad. Your cheesecake should wobble in the middle when you take it out because it will continue to cook for quite some time once it has come out of the oven and you do not want a dry cheesecake.
I made the cheese cake last night and today I decided it was due a taste test before it went round to be presented at lunch! I love the ginger and pecan in the crust, it is a deal maker! I think there was too much butter in it, but then it could just be that I am not used to eating rich foods anymore and noticed it. The cheese part was smooth and beautifully flavoured with pumpkin and spice, not too sweet, and you could tell where the marbelling was because it was a different texture. Very rich, but you should expect that with any cheesecake. I am very happy with the outcome. I will serve it with a vanilla/brown sugar whipped cream tomorrow, not that it needs any more richnes to it but it will look pretty!
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