Pumpkin Cheesecake

I made pumpkin cheesecake for a bake off today at the halloween party at work. It went over super well and I won a $50 certificate for some bbq place (ick). so I traded with someone who won a $20 certificate for starbucks (yum). The recipe is below. If I ever do it again, I would make more crust, and come up with a better way to crush the gingersnaps. The cake was so extremely rich and huge it serves a lot more than 10. The real problem was slicing it thin enough. A pretty slice was enough to kill a small creature from creamcheese overdose. It really really did take 4 packets of cream cheese. I thought that was a typo at first.

For serving, I made some whipped cream and put pecans on top. It was sort of overcooked, but people liked it.

Ingredients
CRUST:
- 1.5 cup crushed ginger snaps
- 4 tablespoons butter, melted

FILLING:
- 2 pounds cream cheese (softened to room temperature)
- 15 ounces pumpkin, packed solid
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons bourbon
- 5 eggs

Container: 9" springform pan
Servings: 10
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 1.5 hours

Directions
Crust
* Preheat oven to 350F. Generously butter inside of pan.
* In a small bowl, combine gingersnap crumbs and melted butter. Press this mixture into the bottom of the springform pan and around the sides if you have enough. Bake for 10 minutes.
* Remove crust from oven and allow to cool completely while you run around trying to get the rest of it together.

Pie
* Mix flour and spices, and set aside.
* Beat cream cheese in a large bowl on medium speed until smooth.
* Add sugar to cream cheese and beat an additional 1 minute on medium speed.
* Blend pumpkin, vanilla and bourbon into the flour mixture.
* When pumpkin mixture is completely blended, mix in to cream cheese mixture.
* Beat in eggs, one at a time, on low speed. Beat just enough to blend each egg.
* Pour pumpkin mixture into completely cooled crust.
* Fill a 9x13 pan half full of water, and place this pan on the bottom rack of the oven. The moisture should help prevent cracking of the cheesecake.
* Place the cheesecake on the middle rack and back for 1 hour and 35 minutes. Do not open the oven door during the first hour of baking.
* After baking, turn oven off, open door and leave cheesecake in oven for 30 minutes to cool slowly.
* Then remove cheesecake to a wire rack and cool for another 30 minutes.
* Cover and chill for a long time (4 hours - overnight) in the refrigerator.

Melt the Belt

I'm having people over again tomorrow to play Killer Bunnies, and am excited about using the crockpot again. Tomorrow it will be corn chowder. And I made Cranberry Pumpkin Bread tonight, which sounds wonderful, but actually ended up sort of weird. Way too much orange zesting, and maybe cranberry and pumpkin shouldn't've gone together to start with.

And having chunky brown sugar that won't meld with the other dry ingredients didn't help much either. Oh well.

At least I finally got motivated to make my apt cleaner. The kitchen counters are awesome. The inside of the microwave, sparkling. The bathroom counters are gleamy, and the bathroom floor is no longer covered with hair (huge improvement). I made my bed with autumn sheets, and shook out my placemats and wiped down the table.

Then it was time to vacuum. Sadly, vacumming did not last very long, because I melted the vacuum cleaner belt into a smelly black mess that stuck to my fingers and stunk up my clean bedroom.

So, unless I find a new vacuum cleaner belt and get it installed without serious injury before people come over tomorrow, the actual rooms they will actually see will have sadly neglected looking carpet that is distinctly lacking in pretty vacuum lines in the carpet.

I guess that's how it goes some times.