Pumpkin Cheesecake

What did you all do for Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving has never really been that big in my family but this year it was especially small with just my mom, brother, sister and I which really didn't work well with the fact that I was in the mood to cook all the things! Hence my mom and I made a massive feast for four people, two of whom are quite picky and didn't eat very much. Also my brother is now vegan and so with only two meat eaters we made an entirely vegetarian meal which my mom said felt like we were eating all side dishes. Whatever, it was delicious.

Turkey-less Thanksgiving... is it real Thanksgiving?

Most of the things we made were things I had made before including Caitlin's delicious stuffing from last year but one new recipe I tried was Pumpkin Cheesecake. The cheesecake was so good it makes me sad to think of it because I could not bring any of it back to school.

Also, funny side note, I got the recipe from the Philly Cheesecake Website and when I went to print it from my mom's computer I went to Kraft's website instead because they are the same company. Well it seems the Kraft people are a little crazy because the Festive Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe is only available x6, that is making 6 cheesecakes. When I printed it I was extremely confused as to why I needed 9lbs of cream cheese! Just curious as to why anyone would ever need to make 6 cheesecakes Kraft...

Ingredients
1 cup Graham Cracker Crumbs
3 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 and 1/2 cups canned pumpkin
3 eggs
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
3 250 g pkg. Light Philadelphia Brick Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 cup pecan halves
Some melted chocolate for pecans
9 inch Springform pan (go buy one if you don't have one, so key for cheesecake!)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine crumbs and butter and press into your springform pan. Set aside.
2. Mix pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, sugar and cornstarch. Add pumpkin mixture.
4. Pour over crust and bake for 50-55 minutes. Cool completely at room temperature and then refrigerate for 4 hours minimum.
5. Melt chocolate in a ziploc and use to attach pecans. Serve with real whip cream if you really don't care about calories for the day.

Our beautiful centre piece!