Pumpkin Cheesecake

Dennis found this recipe in a Southern Living Crockpot cookbook. No use of the actual crockpot, not that you would know it - it may well have been seeing how long it took. 3 hours cook time, plus the prep time. Ugh! Still, it looks amazing and tastes even better.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups gingersnap crumbs (25 to 30 cookies)

3  tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

3  (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided

1  tablespoon vanilla extract

6  large eggs, separated

32 oz cans pumpkin puree

2  large eggs

1  cup whipping cream

1  tablespoon powdered sugar

Combine crumbs and butter - easier than it sounds! What I mean is, I wasn't sure how to go about turning the hard cookies into crumbs until I remember seeing Rachael Ray put croutons in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. So I followed suit and put the cookies in the food processor and that worked very well!

Press the mixture into bottom of a pan. The recipe tells you to use a 12-inch springform pan. I do not own a springform pan so I just decided to use a 9x9 Pyrex pan. As it turned out, there was way too much batter left over so if you don't have the right pan you should probably halve the recipe. Set this mixture aside.

Beat the cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth, then add 1 cup sugar and vanilla, beating until creamy. Stir in the 6 egg yolks, then pour 2 1/2 cups mixture into prepared crust and set aside.

Add the pumpkin puree and 2 eggs to remaining cream cheese mixture. I used the electric mixer for this step.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites at high speed until foamy. Add remaining 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form and sugar dissolves. Pour into pumpkin mixture and mix with a spoon. Pour the resulting mixture over the first cream cheese mixture in the crust.

Bake at 300° for 1 1/2 hours. Then turn the oven off, and run a knife around edge of cheesecake to loosen (I didn't need to do this since I wasn't using the springform pan & so didn't need to remove the cheesecake from the pan). Let stand in oven with door partially open for 1 1/2 hours. Remove sides of pan (if you have the springform pan), then cover and chill.

Beat the whipping cream and powdered sugar at high speed until soft peaks form; spread on top of the cheesecake when you are ready to eat it. Since I knew Dennis & I were just going to eat the cheesecake one piece at a time, I kept the whipped cream in a separate container and put it on the side of the plate. If you are planning on making this for some kind of party where presentation is important, spreading the whipped cream on top would make it look lovely!

Here is the finished product. Looks kind of marbled with the pumpkin part on top. Voila! This cheesecake is DA BOMB, but make sure you set aside at least 3 hours to cook it, and a few more hours afterward to chill it. This dessert would be great for any holiday party. Bon appetit!

Here is the recipe from Southern Living. I tweaked the ingredient list slightly.

Pumpkin Bread

I discovered pumpkin bread when an old friend brought some over years ago. From the moment I tasted it, I was hooked. I never thought I would find a recipe to match the glorious pumpkin bread that I had tasted oh so many years ago, but after some experimenting with recipes I found one that has been a success. I make this bread during the holidays for friends and family. I have also used the batter to make pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cake (both of which are great with cream cheese icing, btw, but that's for another post).

Ingredients

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

3 cups white sugar

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp pumpkin spice

Mix the puree, eggs, oil, water, and sugar together in a large bowl until blended.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, & pumpkin spice.

Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture until blended completely. Pour into whichever container you are using. I have a new Pyrex pan that I usually use for this recipe, but if I am using an older pan I will use Pam, vegetable oil, or butter to line the inside then rub it down with a paper towel before I pour the mixture.

This recipe makes a very large amount of batter and I usually have to divy it up among 2 different pans. I baked a batch of pumpkin bread while writing this post and it took 70 and 77 minutes (one pan was slightly larger than the other). If you are making this as a gift during the holidays, this recipe would be good, but if it is just to snack on around the house, you may be better off halving the recipe.

Here's my bread fresh out of the oven! As you can see it rises quite a bit while baking - I filled each of these pans up to about an inch below the edge. I cut the piece out of the middle of the smaller loaf because the toothpick came out clean but I didn't entirely trust it. Don't worry the bread was fine and it tasted great. :)

Here's the original link from AllRecipes.com. My version has a few minor changes.