The Great Pumpkin Cheesecake, Charlie Brown
On our last visit to Slow Club we indulged in an amazing mascarpone cheesecake with strawberries in balsamic vinegar, recommended by Sante. With the holiday season upon us, and the tendency and expectation of over-indulgence, we set out to revamp the plain ol' pumpkin pie and decided on the pumpkin cheesecake.
We tested 2 recipes: one from Cooking Light, with a graham cracker crust from Gourmet Cookbook and a double layer pumpkin cheesecake from allrecipes.com that I adapted. I learned my lesson with the Cooking Light recipe - the cream cheese was not at room temperature and I believe this resulted in a very dense, quite heavy cheesecake. Nonetheless, Nino brought it to school and both he and the cheesecake were very popular. I told him he should trade some cheesecake for homework favors or better grades.
The second recipe was the winner, and the one we'll be making for Thanksgiving, though I adapted it based on the reviews. I used the Gourmet Cookbook graham cracker crust in my springform pan, used fat free cream cheese (at room temperature), used 2 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese following the recipe for the bottom layer, and then 2 other 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese following the recipe and mixed with pumpkin pie filling (about 1 cup) for the top layer. The cheesecake was ready after about 1.5 hours.
Though I'm quite "cheesecaked out", we'll make the winning recipe one more time to adorn our dessert table come Thursday. Accompanied by persimmon/apple crisp and some kind of chocolate delight from a guest, you can bet I'll be saving room for dessert.
We tested 2 recipes: one from Cooking Light, with a graham cracker crust from Gourmet Cookbook and a double layer pumpkin cheesecake from allrecipes.com that I adapted. I learned my lesson with the Cooking Light recipe - the cream cheese was not at room temperature and I believe this resulted in a very dense, quite heavy cheesecake. Nonetheless, Nino brought it to school and both he and the cheesecake were very popular. I told him he should trade some cheesecake for homework favors or better grades.
The second recipe was the winner, and the one we'll be making for Thanksgiving, though I adapted it based on the reviews. I used the Gourmet Cookbook graham cracker crust in my springform pan, used fat free cream cheese (at room temperature), used 2 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese following the recipe for the bottom layer, and then 2 other 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese following the recipe and mixed with pumpkin pie filling (about 1 cup) for the top layer. The cheesecake was ready after about 1.5 hours.
Though I'm quite "cheesecaked out", we'll make the winning recipe one more time to adorn our dessert table come Thursday. Accompanied by persimmon/apple crisp and some kind of chocolate delight from a guest, you can bet I'll be saving room for dessert.
posted by Karen at 10:28 AM
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