Pumpkin Cheesecake and Walnut Pie Crust
Recipes modified from here and here.
Walnut Pie Crust
Ingredients:
1 1/2 C ground walnuts (You should be able to substitute or add any other kind of nuts. I've made it once with a mixture of walnuts, pecans, and hazelnuts. Depending on the oiliness of the specific nuts you are using, you may need to adjust the amount of butter.) To grind the nuts I've used both a blender and a coffee grinder, both work fine. The coffee grinder seems to grind them much more finely. In either case, the moisture of the nuts can make it a bit difficult to scrape them out of the bottom.
1 1/2 T melted butter
2 T sugar (white or brown, shouldn't matter, you can also use more or less if you want.)
Preparation:
Pre-heat oven to 325 F.
Mix together the ground nuts, melted butter, and sugar in a bowl.
Press firmly and evenly into the bottom of a pre-greased 9 inch round pie pan.
Bake for about 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown.
Now you can let this cool while you are preparing the filling. And keep the oven at 325 F for baking the rest of the cheesecake.
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Ingredients:
2 8 oz. packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 C sugar
1 t vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 C pumpkin puree
1 t pumpkin pie spice (I just used this to make it easier. The mix I used contained cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. If you prefer you can use any combination of spices you like or have on hand although I think cinnamon is essential.)
Preparation:
Using a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. It works *much* better if the cream cheese is pretty soft before you do this. If you haven't already left it out of the fridge for awhile, you can just microwave it for about a minute or however long it takes.
Add and beat in one egg at a time until fully mixed.
Evenly pour about half of this mixture onto the pie crust.
Gently stir in the pumpkin puree and spices into the remaining batter until fully mixed.
Evenly pour the remaining pumpkin mixture on top of the first layer.
Bake for 35-40 minutes.
Let cool.
Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.
It is so fucking amazingly delicious that you really don't need it, but if you want to make a whipped cream topping, here's how:
Just put however much heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla extract you want into a bowl and beat it using a hand mixer until it reaches the consistency you like. If it still seems real liquidy after a while, don't worry, just keep beating it until it becomes more firm.
I could literally eat the whole thing by myself in 2-3 days.
I'm really happy with this recipe because I always assumed making cheesecake was an intricate or difficult process but it's actually really easy and doesn't even require very many ingredients. Most store-bought cheesecakes are full of tons of nasty artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, hydrogenated oils etc. And the natural ones sold at Whole Foods and such cost like $30 for one half the size of this.