Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust (18)

 

Let me first say that many things went wrong with this cheesecake, and they were all my fault. I will explain, in detail, all my failings. 

First, I messed up the crust. How can I mess up the easiest part of the whole dessert? Simple. I didn't follow the recipe. Instead of just blitzing together gingersnap cookies, flour, ginger, butter, and brown sugar to form the crust, I decided to make a batch of my very own gingersnap cookies and use that instead. Like cookie dough. Straight into the pan. Disaster. As I parbaked the crust, the sides started oozing down into the bottom of the pan, and the bottom started puffing up. Then, in the final cheesecake, the crust had a chewy cookie texture. Delicious flavor profile, but all wrong. 

I managed to bring to the filling together without any problems. I beat the cream cheese until smooth. I added the sugar, flour, and spices--scraping frequently. In went the pumpkin( which happened to be the exact amount left over after making pumpkin scones by the way) and the vanilla. I even managed to patiently beat the eggs in one at a time, as directed. I stirred in the sour cream, and once the streaks of white were no more, I poured it into that disaster of a crust. This is where I discovered mistake #2. The recipe calls for a 10 inch spring form. I was using a 9 inch.  That puppy was FULL. I turned the heat down a little to compensate for the extra depth and expected an increased cook time to get the middle cooked through. 

I checked on the cake after 50 minutes--nowhere in the neighborhood of done. I checked after 60 minutes;  1" from the side was still woefully below 170F. I set the timer for 15 minutes and told my husband to check on it while I went to pick the kids up from school. We're going to count that as mistake #: not leaving a time cushion for your problems when you're on a schedule. 

I returned home about 25 minutes later to see mistake #4: forgetting to tell husband that when the appropriate inner temperature is reached, the door is to be propped oven and the cheesecake left in the oven for 1 hour. At this point, the cheesecake had already contracted much too quickly, and the top had split. This also resulted in the middle of the cheesecake being quite mushy, due to the missed hour of low, slow cooking. *Sigh*

Despite the litany of mistakes, five hours later (when I pulled this cheesecake from the fridge) my son and his friends devoured it like locusts. There was much protesting when I tried to save a piece or two. They wanted it for breakfast the next day. Teenage boys are a wonder.

It was met with (mostly) rave reviews. I am a sucker for anything pumpkin/cinnamon/fall flavored. So it should not come as a surprise that I thought the flavor was amazing. As I mentioned, the crust had a strange texture, but I really enjoyed the ginger crust with the cheesecake. It was a match made in flavor heaven. It added more complementary notes than a graham cracker crust. The filling (where it was cooked through in the exterior) was a silky, but firm, texture; exactly how it should be. If I had made this correctly, it would have been perfection. But I tend to learn a lot more from failures than perfection, so at the end of the day, it's still a win in my books. 

Scores (out of 5): Breanna-4. Dustin-3. Michael-4. James-4. Andrew-3. Total 18/25

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pumpkin-cheesecake-with-gingersnap-crust-recipe