The News-Herald Blogs: Mission: Pinpossible: May 2013

Pumpkin cheesecake made easy, delicious

So cheesecake is awesome. There’s really nothing better than cheesecake. Unless you count pumpkin cheesecake that is, which I certainly would consider better than regular cheesecake thanks to this pin for Easy PumpkinCheesecake from Mr.Food.

First off I needed to make the Graham cracker crust, which I blogged about here. But then I was able to get into this incredibly easy recipe for the pumpkin cheesecake.

It really is almost as easy as it looks.

Ingredients

1 egg yolk plus 2 whole eggs

1 prepared 10-inch graham cracker pie crust (extra-serving size)

2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 (15-ounce) can 100% pure pumpkin (not pie filling)

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Beat egg yolk and brush onto pie crust. Bake crust for 5 minutes; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine 2 eggs, cream cheese, and sugar, and beat with an electric beater on medium speed until smooth. Add pumpkin, cinnamon, and ginger and continue beating until well blended.

Spoon mixture into prepared pie crust and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until set.

Let cool, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Here's how my crust looked after being refrigerated overnight.

How it went

I only have a 9-inch pie pan. So right off the bat, we’re working off a smaller pie crust. I prepped the graham cracker crust that I also found on Mr. Food. I also don’t have a pastry brush, so I basically used my hand to spread the egg yolk around onto the pie crust. It wasn’t elegant, but it did work. So I baked my crust for five minutes and set it aside.

Looks pretty lovely now. Just waiting for me to finish the batter and dump it in.

I used Neufchatel instead of regular full-fat cream cheese to make this recipe a touch healthier.

All the batter ingredients ready to mix.

I combined all the other ingredients in my trusty green mixing bowl and grabbed my trusty hand mixer. I blended it until it got this lovely orange sherbet color and an even consistency.

It was all I could do not to pour this directly into my mouth.

I poured as most of the mixture into the prepped pie crust as possible, I probably had about a half-cup of the mixture leftover. (If you do use a 10-inch pan as I did when I repeated this recipe at my parents’ house for a birthday get-together the whole mixture should fit in your prepared pie crust.)

This one even turned out pretty.

I baked mine for 40 minutes to start then used a toothpick to make sure the cheesecake was set. Then threw some aluminum foil over it and put it in the fridge someplace my roommate wouldn’t find it.

Results

Despite all the waiting (refrigerating), this ended up being truly easy and absolutely delicious.

Golden orange deliciousness.

I could not wait to try this. In fact, I might have eaten the uncooked mixture that didn’t fit into my pie crust by the spoonful.

So when I finally sliced myself a piece (and doled one out for my roomie), I barely took the time to snap a photo before devouring my slice of pumpkin-flavored cheesecake heaven. The dessert has that cheesecake texture and consistency without as much denseness as a traditional cheesecake, and it definitely channels that delightful, autumnal pumpkin flavor.

And the crust turned out perfectly. Not too crumbly, not too dry, but absolutely tasty.

The crust held together fantastically.

It was a big hit with my roommate and went over splendidly at a family birthday celebration when I made it in a full-on 10-inch pie pan. I definitely will repeat this one (and I know that my roomie will request it).

Love pumpkin?

I've also blogged about making healthier cakes with packed pumpkin, soft pumpkin cookies that are hard not to scarf down and a pumpkin French toast bake that will brighten any morning.

— Nicole Franz | NiFranz@News-Herald.com | @FranzOrFoe
Follow my Mission: Pinpossible board on Pinterest.

Labels: desserts, pumpkin

Homemade graham cracker crust is easy as pie

I really wanted to do something fun and special as a treat for my roommate and me, and we’re both big fans of pumpkin-flavored desserts and cheesecake. So when I saw a pin for Easy Pumpkin Cheesecake, I was all about that. But before I could get to the pumpkin cheesecake I needed to make the graham cracker crust, which I pinned here.

Both pins are from Mr. Food and were easy to follow. But for now, we’ll stick to the crust.

Here's how the crust turned out before I poured the pumpkin cheesecake mixture into it.

Ingredients

1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, melted

Instructions

In a medium bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and cinnamon; add butter then mix well. Press mixture firmly into bottom and up sides of a 9-inch pie plate.

Chill in refrigerator at least 1 hour before filling.

The dry ingredients (plus a pinch of pumpkin pie spice, because I'm using this for pumpkin cheesecake)

How it went

The most difficult thing about this was turning graham crackers into graham cracker crumbs. I tried just smashing them in a mixing bowl by hand (nominally successful) and using a potato masher (moderately successful, but left a lot of larger crumbs). I tried putting a few in baggy and crushing them by hand to get the fine crumbs I needed. That seemed to work best once the graham crackers were already broken up somewhat. Mostly I just kept getting frustrated, because I couldn’t seem to find a truly efficient way to do this seemingly easy task. But eventually I managed to get 1 1/3 cups of crumbs in my mixing bowl.

A fairly blurry photo (sorry!) of all the ingredients including the scalding hot butter

Adding in the sugar and cinnamon (and a pinch of pumpkin pie spice, because I was making pumpkin cheesecake after all) was easy. I wish I’d melted the butter on the stove, because I ended up using my microwave and had that awful exploding butter problem that seems impossible to avoid in your average microwave. But I microwaved it and managed to coat my microwave in a fine buttery coat while managing to narrowly avoid scalding myself on hot butter.

Once all my ingredients were in the mixing bowl I mixed well, for well, a while. It was one of those recipes where you really work at mixing it’s good exercise though right (I keep telling myself this so I feel less guilty about devouring the delicious food I’m making). I kept mixing until I got this doughy mixture to a fairly even consistency.

Mixing by hand should get you something that looks like this and a workout

Then I dumped the mix into my pie pan and started pressing. This was the second most difficult part of this recipe, because it’s kind of difficult to fill in every bit of the pie pan when your hands are buttery. But once I was done and had thoroughly washed my hands again, I tossed my crust in the fridge.