Pumpkin Cheesecake

One of the greatest advantages living in the countryside is that you can really live and cook seasonal. And I can tell you, autumn is here big time! In my garden, fat orange jewels are shining through the green leafs. That’s right my friends, the pumpkins are ready! I make soup with them, roast them in the oven or, as in this case, include them in the best pumpkin cheesecake ever! You gotta be fair, pumpkins wanna be sweet too sometimes…anyway, bake it, indulge in the scrumptious bites, listen to quiet music and let fall begin!

Ingredients

150g digestive cookies (I used ‘Hobbits’, perfect)
3 tsp. dark brown sugar
½ tsp. cinnamon
100g butter

300g cream cheese or curd cheese
300g pumpkin puree
250-300g white sugar
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
3 egg + 1 egg yolk

First off, to all Europeans reading this, yeah, I know, not easy to find decent pumpkin puree here. So we’ll just make it ourselves, which is way better anyways and so easy. Get out your pumpkin (Ambercup, Hokkaido or Baby Bear), quarter it, deseed it and bake it at a 180°C for about 45 minutes until soft. Peel the browned skin and puree the pumpkin ‘meat’ in a food processor. Let cool before using it. Back to the cheesecake. Get your cookies out and get them finely crumbled and mixed with the very soft butter, sugar and cinnamon in the processor. Press into a (baking sheet lined) spring form. Mix the rest of the ingredients in order of the above list with a free standing mixer until smooth and pale yellow. Fill in the spring form. 

 

Bake for about 50 minutes at 180°C, than turn the oven off but leave the cake inside the closed oven for another 10 minutes. Take out let cool for at least 4 hours.

Enjoy this autumn-goodness with a cup of black tea not minding the grey sky.