Pumpkin Cheesecake

Greetings! I've been so lazy these past few days. The thought of actually uploading pictures, editing them, labeling them, and writing a blog post has been overwhelming my poor little head. But now, Thanksgiving break is over, I'm back at school, and I'm (somewhat) ready to stop being a lazybones and do some work.

So, what did I make for Thanksgiving? I went to my aunt's house and brought her caramel apple pie (from my last post!), pumpkin cheesecake, spinach-artichoke dip, and homemade cranberry sauce.

Let's get started on the pumpkin cheesecake. Now, regular pumpkin pie is okay, but it's totally boring and way too easy to make. Pumpkin filling, evaporated milk, and an egg? Come on, we can do better than that! Hence, the ridiculous, gluttonous, deliciousness that is Pumpkin Cheesecake. 

The original recipe is from here, but I've modified it slightly. Gather your ingredients and get ready to clog some arteries.

Supplies: one 9" springform pan. (For those of you who are unaware: a springform pan is a two-piece pan. It's used mostly for cheesecakes. You use the latch on the side to shut and open it. When the cheesecake is done, you unlatch it and release the cake. Therefore, you don't have to flip the cake over to let it out, which would be a huge mess).

For the crust: 1 3/4 cups of graham cracker crumbs, 3 Tbs. brown sugar, 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice, 1 stick melted butter. (NOTE: I added a little more brown sugar and changed out the pumpkin pie spice for the cinnamon from the original recipe. As you'll learn, I usually just add ingredients based on my ever-changing whims instead of the direct rules of a recipe).

For the cheesecake: 3 8oz. packages of cream cheese, 1 15oz can pureed pumpkin (NOT the pie filling, just plain pumpkin puree), 3 eggs plus one yolk, 1/4 cup sour cream, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 1/4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice, 2 Tbs flour, 1 tsp. vanilla extract. (NOTE: In case you haven't baked/cooked since junior-high home ec, Tsp. means tablespoon and tsp. means teaspoon).

Sorry about the crappy quality of my photos. All I have is my old-ish Canon Powershot and iPhoto. I do what I can, y'know?

Set your oven to 350, with the racks in the lower and middle position. Cheesecakes, as you'll learn, are notoriously tricky if you're a perfectionist and want them to look right. See, I was never really concerned about cracks on the top of my cheesecakes until I was looking up recipes on Allrecipes.com one day and read the comments section. These people are insane and made me neurotic about the looks of my cheesecake. You see, cheesecakes crack really easily. If the cheesecake cools too quickly or the temperature fluctuates a lot, it will separate from the sides of the springform too quickly and cause cracks. Therefore, you need to grease the heck out of your pan, make sure the racks are positioned right, and do a whole bunch of other stuff that I'll tell you about later in the post. (Of course, if you don't care about the aesthetics of your cheesecake, don't bother with most of this crap. It tastes the same whether it's pretty or not).

Now, let's make the crust. Generously grease the sides of your springform. Seriously, PAM that baby up. Now, get a big bowl and mix  the melted butter and other crust ingredients together. You'll have to use your hands. Make sure they're clean.

This is a Paula Deen recipe, and if you watch the Food Network you know that Paula Deen has a sick and unhealthy obsession with butter. Hence the ENTIRE STICK in the crust.

Now, make sure your springform is latched. Press the crust in the bottom of it and a little bit up the sides. Make sure that it's mostly even... one time I made one whose crust was a little lopsided and the whole thing came out like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Again, MAKE SURE that you put your springform on aluminum foil on top of a cookie sheet. One time, I just threw it in the oven and the butter from the crust melted all over the bottom of the oven, causing smoke to pour out. I had to open all the skylights, doors, and windows in my house to get the smell of burning butter out and stop cooking my cake until I cleaned the oven, which I couldn't do until the oven was cool.... quel disastre.

Now, it's time to make the glorious filling. Soften up your cream cheese in the microwave for about 30-45 seconds. Mix the cream cheese with a mixer until it's smooth, then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until there are no lumps

Then, pour it into your crust.

Try not to drool.

So, now you could either put it in the oven... or add some chocolate on top!

It looks pretty good to me. But I like a challenge.

Believe me, chocolate and pumpkin are a match made in heaven. They're like Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter... Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak... Me and trashy Bravo TV reality shows...

So, melt a few handfuls of chocolate chips in the microwave. Put them in a pastry bag or a ziploc bag with a tiny piece of the corner cut off. Draw horizontal stripes on your cheesecake. Then, take a knife, and drag the chocolate in strips or swirls, creating a marbleized look.

It's pretty impossible for this to look bad. Mine didn't look how I wanted it to, so I just added more chocolate and kept swirling it.

Now, here are the important parts for you cheesecake perfectionists. Place your cheesecake in the oven, and set the timer for one hour. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN AT ALL. You will be tempted to open it and stare in delight at your creation, but don't! It will cause the temperature in the oven to fluctuate, causing the cheesecake to crack. Just turn your oven light on and stare at it that way. And do anything you can to ensure that certain family members don't open the oven, either.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Now, here's the next step. Make sure that at about 45 minutes in, you look in the oven (through the window with the oven light on) to see the status of the cheesecake. If it looks firm and brownish around the edges, you can turn the oven off. This is now the only time that you can open the oven. Get a butter knife, and run some hot water over until the knife is hot. Now, open the oven and gently run the knife along the edge of the cake.

Be gentle, I beseech you. This is the easiest way to crack it.

Now, the cake will cook a little bit in the oven as it cools down. You don't take it out immediately, because it will cool too quickly and begin to crack. Just leave it in there until the oven is cool.

Now, you can unlatch the springform pan. Put the cheesecake in the fridge until you're ready to serve it. Believe me, the twelve sticks of butter and twenty four packages of cream cheese are worth it. It's sooooooo good.

Unfortunately, none of my anti-cracking techniques worked on this one. The chocolate sunk into the cheesecake, causing the grand-canyon like craters you see. I was mildly heartbroken, but then I realized that my family doesn't really care about the cracks in my cheesecake. And that's what Thanksgiving is all about, right?

Here's a picture of a perfect, uncracked cheesecake I made this past summer. I covered it in homemade strawberry-basil sauce.