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.

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.

Impressive, eh? Emphasis on the pressing that you'll have to do to get to this part

Read about how I filled this pie crust with some delicious pumpkin cheesecake!

The finished cheesecake looks so delicious

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

Batter or dough? You decide.

I love pumpkins. I love the way they look, and I especially love how delicious it tastes while still being nutrition-packed and low-fat. 

I’ve already shared how easy it is to make healthier cakes with packed pumpkin, but I haven’t really showcased my deep love of pumpkins on here yet. I’m going to remedy that in the next few posts. (Spoiler alert! Expect crockpot pumpkin butter, pumpkin French toast bake, and an as-yet undetermined goodie that will probably involve cream cheese pumpkin cheesecake.)

But this pin for soft pumpkin cookies is the one that I’m pretty sure made me awfully popular at my apartment complex in the leasing office and residential services after I took a batch over to my roommate at work. 

The pin links to the Honey and Butter blog, which is written by Christi Park. It appears the blog hasn’t been updated in a while (October 2011), but it’s a very clean, very navigable site, with plenty of categories and recipes you can look through. I’m eyeing the watermelon lemonade for when summer rolls around.

But back to a more cold-weather recipe in these soft pumpkin cookies.

Ingredients

They kept their shape better than I expected.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups chilled pumpkin puree (canned pumpkin)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.

You can tell I used a spoon to dish 'em onto the cookie sheet.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the granulated sugar, the dark brown sugar, and the oil together. Add the pumpkin puree and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk until combined.

4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and whisk until completely combined.

5. Use a small cookie scoop or a large spoon to drop a rounded, heaping tablespoon of the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.

6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, making sure that the cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cookie comes out clean. The cookies should be firm when touched. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool completely on a cooling rack.

How it went

I feel like I should knock on wood, because my last post (gluten-free four-ingredient peanut-butter cookies) went smooth and now this one went off without a hitch, too!

These passed the firm-to-touch and toothpick tests.

I used canned pumpkin and didn’t chill it, and my spice measurements were heaping measurements.

The only problem I encountered was that my whisk sucks. Seriously look at it. I have to bend it back into a workable shape all the time. It’s definitely seen better days. 

Maybe I'll buy a new whisk, but I'll probably
just keep complaining about this one.

I had to work at mixing it up a little more because of that. This cookie dough is going to end up very similar to cake batter in that it is way runnier than your average cookie dough, but that's part of why these cookies are so amazing — they have a distinctly moist cake-like texture that makes them delightful.

I'm pretty sure this is an accurate representation of how many of these cookies my roommate ate.

I baked mine about 10 minutes on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets, and they slid off the parchment paper like it was Teflon. 

Really, the hardest part of making these cookies was trying to keep my roommate from eating them all.

Love pumpkin? 

I've also blogged about making healthier cakes with packed pumpkin, a pumpkin French toast bake that will brighten any morning, and an easy and delicious pumpkin cheesecake.

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