So it's fall in Indiana, which means pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin everything. I, unfortunately, do not care for pumpkin - pumpkin anything. My husband loves it, as does the rest of the midwest (so it seems) so I will be cooking everything I find in the cookbook that deals with pumpkin - yay fall!! My first pumpkin attempt was a yummy (so I'm told) cheesecake. I have only made one other cheesecake ever and was hoping that this would be a success. For some reason, making an actual REAL cheesecake (and a pumpkin one at that) frightened me, and I thought it would be so difficult. Surprisingly, the cheesecake is not difficult, but it is a bit time consuming, as there are a lot of steps. The first thing you have to do is make the graham cracker crust (recipe below). I do not have a large food processor, so to crush the graham crackers, I put them into a big ziplock bag, and crushed them with a rolling pin. Once you mix the graham crackers, sugar, and butter together, you press it down into the bottom of a springform pan. I think that if you don't have a springform pan, you can use a regular round cake pan, but I'm not sure how easy it is to then get it out of the pan after it bakes. The crust then either has to bake for a few minutes, or freeze for something like 20 minutes. I chose to bake it.
Once the crust is taken care of, the actual cheesecake part is made. The recipe calls for adding the eggs and egg yolks one at a time, which I normally would ignore and add them all at once, but let's remember that I'm trying to really learn how to cook/bake well, so I followed the instructions. I have heard some cooks advocate breaking the eggs into a separate small bowl before adding them to the mixture, but I always crack them right over the bowl as I add them - I mean, seriously, who takes the time to do that? I now am a more informed cook, and know why the "pre-cracking" is recommended. While adding the last egg, I accidently dropped the shell into the bowl as the mixer was mixing - AAAAGGGHH!!! I turned off the mixer as fast as I could, while simultaneously having a small heart attack. I then had to scrape out all of the broken bits of egg shell, hoping that they actually all got out. I didn't hear any complaints later, so I think all was okay.
The recipe says to put a cake pan with some water in it into the oven to moisten the air before you bake the cheesecake, but do you think I remembered to do that? I did not. If I remember right, I think the reasoning behind actually doing this is that the moisture helps to keep the cheesecake from cracking on the top. Take a good look at my cheesecake and you'll find that there are several cracks on the top. I'll have to try to remember the water next time so that the end result is prettier!
Finally, the last step is to put a sour cream topping on the top and finish the last few minutes of baking. Do you see a sour cream top on my pumpkin cheesecake? No, you do not. Why? Only because my sweet, darling, little daughter decided to rummage through the cabinets while I was cleaning up (something she always does, and I approve of, since it keeps her busy) and she pulled out a piece of dry spaghetti and jabbed it into her ear. Second and much more real heart attack of the day... Yes, boys and girls, we had to make an unexpected immediate trip to the doctor. The cheesecake was ready to come out, but we didn't have time for the topping, so we'll just have to make another one sometime to try again. AND... no, little cute girl did not puncture her ear drum as I feared, but she did scratch it - we were lucky.
Here is a fun new tidbit I found today. The Joy of Cooking can actually be found online, so I'll be adding the recipes right here via the web - yay! Click on the link below for the graham cracker crust and pumpkin cheesecake recipes!
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