Directions
With the arrival of autumn, one of the first recipes to make is pumpkin cheesecake: a straightforward dessert, which, thanks to the sweetness of the pumpkin and a few spices, manages to create a symphony of unique flavors.
Flavors that are the perfect synthesis of autumn when the days get shorter, the leaves are tinged with golden and orange tones, just like this splendid dessert, which you can serve as a grand finale for dinner with friends or as a delicious snack for your loved little children.
And since we are talking about children and snacks, we tell you to take it easy because this cheesecake is caloric. Still, the amount of sugar is low. Very low compared to the usual cheesecakes, precisely because of the pumpkin, an ingredient so complete in taste and aroma that it has few rivals.
As ingredients of the pumpkin cheesecake, we used the three classic spices that go perfectly with the pumpkin: nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. A small piece of ginger is always welcome. It helps to play down the heaviness and compactness of all this cheese, but not everyone likes it.
Ingredients and doses for making a delicious pumpkin cheesecake
20 cm diameter mold
For the base
- 300 grams of digestive or ginger biscuits are excellent!
- 65 grams of butter at room temperature
For the pumpkin cheesecake filling
- 450 grams of creamy cheese
- 200 grams of cottage cheese
- 100 grams of mascarpone
- 85 grams of sugar
- 25 grams of fresh ginger
- 20 grams of vanilla powder
- 600 grams of pumpkin pulp
- 8 grams of nutmeg
- 6 grams of cloves
- 10 grams of cinnamon
- 5 eggs
How to make pumpkin cheesecake
Wash the pumpkin, cut it and pieces and remove the pumpkin seeds, not to be thrown away. Wash them and then toast them to flavor salads and soups. Bake the pumpkin in the oven with the peel at 170 degrees for 25 minutes. Be careful not to burn it. It depends a lot on how big the pieces are. If it starts to blacken, lower the temperature. It is better to prolong the cooking rather than burning it or cooking it only superficially. Instead, in this case, we must obtain a pumpkin puree. It must be caramelized and pulped: do not be in a hurry.
Melt the butter in a double boiler slowly. Put the biscuits in your mixer and blend to reduce into fine flour. Pour the biscuit flour into a bowl, add the butter, and mix and mix the butter.
Take a mold of 20 centimeters in diameter, line it with parchment paper, and pour in the mixture of biscuits and butter to make the cheesecake base. Mash well with a glass or a meat mallet to flatten and compact. Bake the base in a static oven at a temperature of 160 degrees for about 8-10 minutes, then remove it and let it cool.
While the base is cooking, we will prepare the filling of the pumpkin cheesecake. When it has cooled, take the pumpkin you cooked earlier, remove the peel, then mash it with a fork until you get a puree without lumps and season with all the spices. As a rule, it is always valid to use whole spices, grind them on the spot. Otherwise, they will lose all their aromas. A coffee grinder is excellent for reducing spices to a powder. Peel and mash the ginger, add it to the pulp, and then stir.
Now let’s move on to the cheese phase. Put the cream cheese, ricotta and mascarpone in a bowl and start stirring with a whisk. In this case, a planetary mixer helps speed up and optimize the work and the mixture will be much softer and better blended. Whip with the whisk of the planetary mixer at medium speed until the cheeses have become a frothy and puffy mixture.
Add the pumpkin pulp and sugar and continue to whisk. When the pumpkin has been perfectly blended, start adding the eggs, but one at a time, without haste. If you use the planetary mixer, switch to a low speed.
When the filling is ready, pour it over the base and spread, using a spatula to level it well.
Ok, hold on, this recipe is not a walk in the park, but now comes the most delicate phase: cooking in a bain-marie. Why the bain-marie? Because you need delicate and non-aggressive cooking, otherwise, the cheesecake will dry out and crack and will be the Apocalypse after all this hard work. Let’s not fall one step away from the finish line!
Put the mold with the cheesecake in an oven bag, like the plastic ones, but be careful and do not cover it. The bag must prevent water from entering but not cover the cake. You can cut or roll the bag to give it the right shape.
Well, now put the bag with the mold in a pan with high edges and add water to the pan to make the bain-marie, but no more than 3-4 centimeters. We do not want the water to enter the mold.
Cooking pumpkin cheesecake: temperature and times
Ok, we can bake the cheesecake. The oven is already hot from before, temperature always 160 degrees in a static oven: it needs slow cooking of at least 60 minutes. After an hour, check the center of the cheesecake, which must be solid enough, not hard, but firm, at least not liquid. If it is very liquid, cook for another 10 minutes. If it is cooked, turn off the oven and open the oven door and let the cheesecake cool in the oven.
Remove the cheesecake from the oven, carefully remove the water, remove it from the bag and let it cool completely. The water in the bain-marie remains hot for hours. At this point, you would like to cut it and eat it, right?
Don’t dare! Before eating your coveted slice, it has to rest in the refrigerator for the whole night or at least 8 hours! Basically, it should be served cold, not very cold, so take it out of the fridge 20 minutes before slicing and eating it.
The classic accompaniment is with a few sprigs of whipped cream. If you consider that you will be able to make 8-9 beautiful slices of cheesecake with this cake and calculate 250 ml of fresh whipping cream and 50 grams of sugar. Put in a bowl and then whip the cream for 4 minutes with an electric whisk and finally decorate. If the dessert is for adults, you can flavor the whipped cream with 3 cl of cognac or calvados.
Cover the pumpkin cheesecake with caramel sauce if you feel particularly greedy.
Which wine goes well with pumpkin cheesecake?
We choose a structured sweet wine, very sweet and powerful such as Recioto della Valpolicella, Barolo Chinato or a Vin Santo Toscano. If you prefer more structured and alcoholic wines and spirits, sweet vermouth, Port wine, Marsala, Madeira wine, Sherry, Brandy, Cognac, and Calvados are excellent solutions.
