Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake

This is so easy to make! Until recently, I'd shunned cheesecake making. Special pan? Water bath? Worrying about cracks on the top? Too much stress and work, I'd always thought.
Not so! Not so at all. I've always had a springform pan but never used it. The water bath is nothing...I just bought one of those aluminum foil disposable roaster pans to fill with water and set to spring form in. And I've not had any cheesecakes come out with cracks on the top, either--even after baking them more than required.
So if you've been reluctant to try your hand at cheesecake in the past, I swear it is not as hard as it sounds. And if you don't have a spring form pan, they are cheap enough. I picked up a set of 3 for like $9 at WalMart (my old one got bent up because I didn't store it properly).
This pumpkin cheesecake is wonderful! It isn't overpowering on the "canned pumpkin" flavor, as a regular old pumpkin pie can be. I've made it 3 times in the last month or so, and brought it as my dish to pass for Thanksgiving. My relatives were topping it with Cool Whip, which I'd never considered. I tried it that way myself and it was even better than plain!


Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake
(Slightly modified from the Barmy Baker)

Crust:
1 cup graham cracker crumbs (I buy the pre-packaged kind)
2 T sugar
3/4 stick (6T) butter, melted

Prepare a 9 or 10" spring form pan by spraying the bottom and sides with baking spray. In a small bowl, mix together crust ingredients. Press crust mixture into the bottom of spring form pan and bake for ~5 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Filling:
2 lbs. room temperature cream cheese
1 1/2cups sugar
4 T flour
1 t salt
6 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
Cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice, to taste

In the bowl of a large food processor (or I am sure this can be done in a large bowl with a hand mixer), combine the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt and process until smooth--scraping down the sides as needed. (If you didn't let your cream cheese come to room temp, you'll definitely need to scrape--I am guilty of that!) Add the eggs, one at a time (I got away with 2 at a time), processing well after each addition. Add the vanilla, pumpkin and spices and process until well blended and smooth. Pour the mixture over the crust in the spring form pan.
Place the spring form pan into a very large baking dish that is deep enough to hold water that will come about 2 inches up the sides of the spring form pan.
Bake for ~1 hour and 30 minutes, or until the cheesecake is slightly pulling away from the sides and jiggles a little in the middle. It will continue to set as it cools. (The last 2 times I've baked this cheesecake for 1 hour, 40 minutes until it didn't jiggle and it turned out fine. I was too paranoid it wouldn't set.)
Turn off oven and allow the cheesecake to cool inside with the door propped open until it is "safe" to remove from the water bath. Remove and cool at room temperature for ~ 45 minutes, then refrigerate overnight.

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