Shelby Stidham

Pumpkin Cheesecake for Dessert

November 21, 2007 – 1:19 pm

If you like pumpkin pie and you like cheesecake then you’ll absolutely love this yummy Pumpkin Cheesecake. It’s not a complicated recipe at all and it’s relatively quick to make. This dessert is actually my favorite for Thanksgiving because while everyone else is making pumpkin pie, you’re spicing it up with a Pumpkin Cheesecake!  A lot of people are intimidated by cheesecake because the cooking, cooling, cracking.. whatever it is, don’t worry! If I can do it, you can do it. So let’s get started!

Here’s what you’re going to need, or, Your Ingredients: Regular Cream Cheese, Vanilla flavoring, Cinnamon, Large Eggs, Pumpkin Puree,  Pure Cane Sugar, and a Graham Cracker Crust. You will also need, or, Your Supplies: a large mixing bowl, a mixing spoon, an electric mixer (optional but handy), a small second bowl, measuring cups, a spatula (optional) and measuring spoons. Plus a cup of coffee if you bake in the morning like I do Let’s start making our delicious dessert!

First let’s start with the cream cheese. You will need 16 ounces of regular cream cheese. I am using 2-8oz packages of Lucerne cream cheese because Safeway was having a 4/$5 sale. Put that cream cheese into that small separate bowl and microwave it for a couple of minutes to soften it up. Or, if you’re on the ball, you can take the cream cheese out a couple hours before you start baking so it’s naturally softened. After you soften it up, dump it into your big mixing bowl. After this, you can pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees.

Next you will add one cup of pure sugar to the cream cheese.  For those of you who love Splenda as much as I do let me tell you, don’t use it for this! We can go low-calorie on our next dessert, I promise, but for now let’s load up the good stuff to make it as tasty as possible. After all, we are making if for Thanksgiving! Our diets can wait!

Next we’re going to add 1/2 teaspoon of Vanilla extract. If you’re like me and you like to add the least amount of spice-like ingredients possible, you can add a little more Vanilla and a little less cinnamon. It just makes it a bit sweeter.

Now we will stir our ingredients together. This is the part where the electric mixer will come in handy. Because I don’t have an electric mixer, I just stirred it all by hand. Typically, cheesecake should have no lumps in it but without an electric mixer, that’s pretty difficult. I left some clumps in because my arm was getting numb, but the lumps don’t ruin it. It just looks different than super-smooth cheesecake.

After you’ve mixed all the lumpies out (or if you choose to leave some lumps in, just mix until the big clumps are gone), now we will add our next ingredient. You will need 2 large eggs, adding one at a time. Drop one in, stir it up, and drop the next in. Make sure the eggs are mixed in very good.

Now, once our creamy cream cheese mixture is mixed up really well, we will measure out 1 cup of the mixture. This would be a good time to tell you about the loose crumbs in the bottom of the pie crust. If you like to use everything you purchase, much like myself, then you’ll scoop those crumbs out and save them for some beautification at the end.

Next, using a spatula or a spoon, spread the 1 cup of mixture into our pre-made Graham cracker pie crust. Smooth it evenly across the bottom of the pie crust so that it makes a flat layer. Set that aside. Now you will need 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree. Measure out 1/2 cup of the puree and add it to our cream cheese mixture left in the bowl. Because I don’t add spices like nutmeg and cloves to my pumpkin pie like many recipes do, I often use a tad bit more than a 1/2 cup but it’s up to you. Now we will add 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the mixture. Its starting to smell really good!

Now we need to mix the pumpkin and cinnamon into our cream cheese mixture. After it’s super mixed up, let’s add the remaining mixture to our already semi-filled pie crust and smooth it all out. If you’re a perfectionist (I’m definitely not) then you might want to pick up the pie crust and lightly jiggle it side-to-side to get the cheesecake smooth on top. Me, I just smooth it out with a spatula, leaving “love marks” on the top Now we will bake our Pumpkin Cheesecake in our 325 pre-heated over for 35-40 minutes. You know it’s done baking when the sides are no longer jiggly and the center is almost solid. Mine has been cooked a pinch too long, and you can tell because it’s lifted from the crust a bit. But, don’t worry, cheesecake is always good. Then take it out of the oven and set it in a safe place to cool. It should cool out of the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour. After that, cover it and refrigerate it for 3 hours, or better yet, over night. Once it’s been refrigerated, it’s ready to eat. If you like to make it super pretty and way fattening, you can add whipped cream to the top. I’m not a huge fan of whipped cream, so instead I added those loose pie crumbs I told you about earlier and some pumpkin pie spice to the top. Not too much, though, because it’s already sweet enough. And there you have it! You’ve just made a yummy Pumpkin Cheesecake. Not too hard, was it?

(Edit: This is my Pumpkin Cheesecake before it’s gone into the refrigerator so no worries, if yours cracks on the top after it cools, thats okay because mine did too!) Now.. enjoy and share this recipe with your friends and family.