Pumpkin Cheesecake

I am a cheesecake fiend. I love it dearly, in (almost) all its varieties. I will eat cheesecake for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, twosies, afternoon tea, dinner, and as a midnight snack.

Strangely, for someone so obsessed with cheesecake, I'd never tried to make my own until a few days ago. This one was made for a party, and it disappeared so quickly that I was reminded once again of the singular magic of a well-made cheesecake: it vanishes like no other dessert you'll ever meet.

Anyway, I think that for a first effort at cheesecake, this was a more than respectable effort. I'll probably come back to it at Thanksgiving, for an alternative to (or, ooh, alongside) pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

For the crust:

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs, crushed
3/4 cup ginger snap crumbs, crushed
5 tbsp butter, melted

For the filling:

1 cup sugar
3 (8 oz) packages of softened cream cheese (Avoid the low fat stuff. It's cheesecake; it's a dessert. You're eating it for the taste, not for the low calorie count. So ditch the diet and get the stuff that tastes good)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp whiskey or bourbon
1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT sweetened, NOT spiced, just regular pumpkin with no additives)
3 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Begin by preheating the oven to 350F.

Make the crust by combining the graham cracker and ginger snap crumbs with the melted butter in a medium bowl. Stir them until they're all coated with the butter, in crumbly little bits. Locate the springform pan or pie dish that you're using to bake the cheesecake in. The springform is optimal in theory, but I don't own one, so I used a deep pie dish, which turned out fine. Press the crumbs evenly into your dish. They shouldn't reach all the way up the sides, this is to be expected. Aim for a crust that ends 2/3 of the way up the sides of your dish. Bake the crust in the oven for 5 minutes, then remove it and set aside until the filling is ready.

In a large mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and whiskey, and beat them with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the pumpkin, the eggs, and all the spices, and continue beating. This is the important part: turn the mixer up to its second or third highest setting, the one for cake icing or some similarly thick substance. Let it run on this high setting for 2 full minutes. Why? Because this inflates the eggs and will make your cheesecake light and fluffy. Once you've properly mixed your filling, pour it immediately into the pan with the crust and get the whole thing into the oven as quickly and gently as possible (you don't want to agitate out the air bubbles).

Bake for 60-70 minutes. The key to proper cheesecake is to reove it from the oven BEFORE the center is completely set. There should still be a reasonable jiggle to the middle of the cheesecake when you remove it from the oven, though the sides should be set. This is key to the texture. Let your cheesecake sit out to cool to room temperature, then refridgerate it for at least 4 hours before serving. Overnight is best, but if you're like me you don't plan that far ahead.

Serve alone, or use a pint of fresh whipping cream and some sugar to make homemade whipped cream to put on top. Don't bother with the storebought stuff (the texture is all wrong, and the taste always seemed faintly chemical to me), but if you're willing to put in three minutes of elbow grease, the silky-heavy texture of the homemade stuff is a good complement to the cheesecake.

Servings: 8-10