Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

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I spent Thanksgiving in Austin, Texas at my cousin Rachel’s house, and had the pleasure of baking in a real kitchen. One with lots of counters, drawers, storage–things I don’t have in my tiny apartment kitchen. I made a delicious apple crumble pie, and this pumpkin cheesecake. The bottom layer is plain cheesecake, the top is pumpkin cheesecake.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you I hate pumpkin. I hate the texture, the smell, and especially the taste. I also hate cheesecake. But I love my family, so I made them a pumpkin cheesecake. And they loved it and gave it rave reviews. Yay!

Ingredients
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground cloves
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/2 cup frozen whipped topping, thawed

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Blend in eggs one at a time. Remove 1 cup of batter and spread into bottom of crust; set aside.
3. Add pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to the remaining batter and stir gently until well blended. Carefully spread over the batter in the crust.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until center is almost set. Allow to cool, then refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight. Cover with whipped topping before serving.

My notes
I made my own crust using the recipe on the box of graham cracker crumbs. It was delicious.

Recipe from All Recipes.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze

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I copied this recipe from the food section of the LA Times a couple of months ago and finally got a chance to make it. I had some leftover milk (I never have milk in my house) and a ton of powdered sugar, so I figured why not continue fattening up my coworkers right before Thanksgiving. They’re always up for sweets.

This is good. It’s dense, moist, and has a wonderful flavor. And it’s a little after 9:00 a.m. and one of the loaves is already gone. I think it’s safe to say it has the coworker seal of approval.

Cake Ingredients
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened, plus additional for greasing the pan
1 (1-pound) box dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
5 eggs

Cake Preparation

1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and stir with a fork; set aside. Into a small bowl, pour the milk and add the vanilla; set aside.
3. With a mixer, beat the butter at high speed until light and fluffy. Add the brown sugar in three batches, then add all of the white sugar, beating after each addition. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.
4. Reduce the speed to low and add half of the flour mixture and then half the milk, beating until the flour or milk has disappeared into the batter. Add the rest of the flour and the rest of the milk in the same way. Quickly scrape the batter into the tube pan and bake until the cake is nicely browned at the edges, springs back when lightly touched at the center and a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes.
5. Remove the pan from the oven and leave it on a wire rack for 20 to 30 minutes. Loosen the cake from the pan with a table knife and turn it out onto a wire rack or plate, then leave it to cool completely. When cool, glaze with caramel glaze.

Glaze Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons half and half (I used whole milk)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Glaze Preparation

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter.
2. Add milk and brown sugar, stir to combine.
3. Boil vigorously for 1 minute.
4. Remove from heat and beat in 1/2 cup powdered sugar.
5. Cool slightly then beat in the vanilla and remaining powdered sugar, adding more milk if necessary.
6. Quickly spoon over cake before glaze sets.

Cake recipe from the LA Times, August 22, 2007 (sorry, can’t find the link in their archives).

Glaze recipe from Cupcake Bakeshop.

My notes:

• I don’t own a tube pan, so I used two loaf pans instead.
• I didn’t have dark brown sugar, so I used golden brown sugar.
• The LA Times recipe included a caramel glaze, but it called for evaporated milk which I did not have in my kitchen, so I searched online for a different glaze recipe.

Leftover Halloween Candy Cupcakes

My coworkers had some leftover Halloween candy, so I had the brilliant idea of bringing more sugar to the office via leftover Halloween candy cupcakes! Because how can candy and a cupcake together possibly be bad? Well…

I found a recipe for candy cupcakes and it said to chop the candy and stir it into the batter. Since I’m not a huge fan of crunchy cupcakes, I had the brilliant [at the time] idea of chopping the candies into thirds and putting a piece directly in the batter, like I did for the cookie dough cupcakes.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take into consideration that the heat from the oven would melt the chocolate and caramel, thus causing it to stick to the bottom of the wrapper. Ooops.

I’m pretty sure my coworkers will still eat them.
– – –
As you probably did not notice, although I feel the need to share anyway, I now have a Flickr account solely for this blog, which can be found here. This means each recipe is sorted into its own set, and all sets of the same type of recipe are all part of a collection. Did that make sense? Maybe this will make it easier. Yes, I am slightly obsessive when it comes to organizing things.

I’ve moved most of my baking pictures over, but I am still in the process of adding captions and recipe links, so in the meantime, all of the previous posts still link to the pictures on the old Flickr stream.

That is all.

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