Pumpkin Cheesecake

I love pumpkin pie and I like cheesecake so I thought it would be interesting to make a pumpkin pie cheesecake, which has more emphasis on the pumpkin than cheesecake.

As per usual, I looked to my fav source, Cooking Light for a pumpkin cheesecake recipe. I mean cheesecake is without a doubt going to be somewhat fattening so I wanted to mediate as much damage as possible!

Here is the recipe below.

Ingredients
Cooking spray
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 4 cookie sheets)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 (8-ounce) block fat-free cream cheese
1/2 cup (4 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons reduced-fat sour cream
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 large eggs
1/2 cup frozen reduced-calorie whipped topping, thawed
Cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 325°.

I was a little wary about just putting the graham cracker crumbs without anything to hold them together, so I found another crust recipe. I used 8 graham crackers and I mixed them with one egg white and a 1/2 tablespoon with sugar and baked this for 8 minutes.



Then Combine sugars and cream cheeses in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth. Add pumpkin and next 9 ingredients (through eggs), and beat well.


Pour cheese mixture into prepared pan. Bake at 325° for 35 minutes or until center is just set. Turn oven off, and partially open oven door. Cool cheesecake in oven 1 hour.

Remove cheesecake from oven, and cover. Chill at least 8 hours or overnight. Serve with whipped topping, and sprinkle topping with cinnamon, if desired.



I did some variations of my own. I omitted the sour cream since I didn't have any on hand and I never really eat sour cream. I added the whole can of pumpkin since I love pumpkin but the cheesecake did taste more pumpkiny than cheesecakey..which was fine with me. If you like more of a cheesecake flavor, I would follow the instructions for only adding one cup then. I did not have any ground ginger so I added a teaspoon of pumpkin spice and did not add additional nutmeg or cloves. I also did not serve it with a whipped topping since I thought it might be rich enough.