Pumpkin Cheesecake

This is a recipe I have been intrigued by since I first opened the book. The only pumpkin recipe I was aware of beforehand was a Pumpkin pie and even then I assumed it was made with fresh pumpkin, not a puréed tinned kind. I sourced mine from Amazon, at the same time I reordered the Marshmallow Fluff for the pumpkin, and other, whoopie pies.

The start of this cheesecake is like many others, smash up a load of digestives, again in the blender, and add to melted butter. Then you add the twist of ground cinnamon and nutmeg and once combined the press into the lined tin. As with all my cheesecakes I used a 9 inch tin rather than 8 inch, as the ones I have are too shallow and also only have a loose base, not spring sides and this is definitely an essential for this type of cake.

The base went to chill in the fridge and so I cracked on with preheating the oven and whipping up the topping. Cream cheese, cinnamon and sugar all whisked together before adding the 3 eggs one at a time. So far so good. Then the tinned pumpkin has its turn. I was curious as to what it would look like but once the tin top was sliced off it was literally just blender up smooth pumpkin purée. This got me thinking that I might try the pumpkin whoopie pies with fresh steamed and then blender pumpkin after I had carved it for Halloween. Wanted to see if it would make any difference in terms of texture and taste.

Back to the recipe and the pumpkin is added to the sugar and cream cheese mixture until all blended nicely. I expected the colour to be a bit more orange than it was, it just added a slight hue to it instead. This was poured onto the chilled base and into the oven monster it went. I have given up placing tin foil around the cheesecake and sinking it into water, instead preferring to place a roasting tin of water on the shelf below. It does the trick in keeping the moisture in with less faffing around and flooding of the kitchen sides.

Cheesecake took around 50 minutes to bake and then was popped into the fridge once cooled enough on the side. I didn't leave this one overnight as we planned on having it for dessert after our roast dinner.

I was the first, and actually the only one to taste this, and I have to say I was deeply disappointed. The texture wasn't as creamy as as usual cheesecake for a start, I think this was because of the mushed pumpkin in it took some of that smoothness away. It also didn't seem to have much of a pumpkin nor a cream cheese taste to it, that almost seemed to have cancelled each other out. The smell was lovely, that of the spices in the topping and biscuit base but otherwise it lacked much else to me personally. I was going to give it another try a few days later but just couldn't tempt myself to have another piece and so after a fair few days of it sitting in the fridge abandoned and alone, it went in the bin!

I am not proud to admit that as I have always given each of these recipes an open mind but this one just didn't seem to cut it. It might have just been my particular cheesecake but it will be interesting to read the comments of others who have made this one already too. Also have another pointer I need addressing..whilst the cheesecake comes out the oven perfectly flat and smooth on top, once it starts to cool mine always develops a big crack down the middle and I don't know how to stop this happening.