Pumpkin Cheesecake

 

 Sticking with fall themed foods, here is another pumpkin recipe. We had pumpkin cheesecake at a restaurant one night, and it was so good, we poked around for pumpkin cheesecake recipes on several of the recipe web sites. None of the ones we found were quite to our liking, but one somewhat like this was pretty close. On the first try, it cracked pretty badly. On the second time around I added the sour cream and another egg, and left it in the oven to cool more slowly – and viola, nary a crack to be seen. I think you’ll really like this, ‘tis the season!

Ingredients:
Crust:
2 Cups ground ginger snaps*
1/2 cup ground pecans
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/3 Cup butter, melted
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Filling:
3 – 8 ounce pkgs. cream cheese, softened
1 Cup pumpkin puree
5 eggs
1/2 Cup sour cream
1 1/2 Cup brown sugar
6 drops orange food color** (comes in the Fall assortment)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees. Crush ginger snaps in metal bowl with something real hard, like the handle of an ice cream scoop.

Grind the pecans in a food processor.

Combine the cookie crumbs, ground pecans, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and melted butter in medium bowl; press into bottom of a 9 inch spring form pan.

(I’ve been told that a food processor will grind up the ginger snaps too, but so far, I’ve been too afraid of the noise to try it; they’re awfully hard.)

Combine remaining ingredients in a separate medium bowl, blending well, pour over crust.

Bake at 325 for 80 minutes, then turn oven off and leave cheesecake in oven to cool down for another hour before removing to countertop cool down for another hour before refrigerating. Cheesecake is best if allowed to “mellow” at least one or two days before serving.

* If you don’t have – and don’t want to wait until you get ginger snaps, you can substitute graham crackers. A graham cracker crust will work great, just isn’t as unique.

**If you don’t have orange food color, I bet you can figure out how to combine some red and yellow. 🙂