Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake

Finished Product 

Have you ever had the most perfect day in your life, and you don't want it to end? Bailey came into town for the weekend just to hang out with me and cook a nice meal. We like to try to spend one weekend together in November before all the mad rush of Christmas begins every year. Is it so wrong to say that I look forward to this weekend much more so than Christmas itself?

We always spend the Friday night talking about ideas we have about what we might like to cook and we drag out all the Food & Drink magazines to come up with ideas. Bailey wanted to try out a recipe she really liked the look of, and I wanted to fix a wrong that has been bothering me to no end. I made some pumpkin spice brownies last month that were such a disappointment. They were so dry that I thought I might choke to death and the flavours were so wrong together. It just was all wrong in every way. Plus I blogged a recipe for pate that I was shooting my mouth off about, but I wrote it off the top of my head and had no photo to post on it. So the menu was born. Pate (because we needed a photo), French Onion soup (because we adore it), sliced beef tenderloin in Yorkshire pudding drizzled with Bearnaise sauce on a bed of arugula (this is the one that caught Bailey's eye) and to right the wrong - scrap those shitty brownies altogether and modify the idea to become a cheesecake!

So off we went this morning to gather up the ingredients we needed. We were blessed with a nice, sunny warm day and our travels took us all over the town. First the Walmart because I finally bought a food processor which I needed for the pate. I've been without one for twenty years since the motor blew out of my last one. I've managed to make do, but there comes a time when you just have to cough up the sixty eight bucks for the good of all. And thank God too because the pate was awesome. Just as I remembered it after all this time. Then we hit up the liquor store because I just knew this menu was begging for a nice bold and robust Chilean Carmeniere. Plus we needed cocktails to keep us from dying of thirst as we slaved away at the stove all afternoon. Then we stopped off for an amazing lunch of Pho and cold shrimp rolls and imported beer from Thailand, and finally to the Asian market for the remaining ingredients. Chicken livers and beef tenderloin to be precise. And off home to start the process of the amazing meal! Bailey will post the recipe for the main course, but I take the privilege to right the wrong of the really bad pumpkin brownies. So let's make an amazing cheesecake!

Homemade stencil- the most creative thing I have ever done! 

I used a ready make graham crust because I had one in the pantry. But you can easily make a crust from scratch. 3/4 cup graham crumbs, 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of melted butter. Stir it all up and press it into a pie pan.
Preheat the oven to 350.

You'll need for the filling:
2 packages of cream cheese
2 eggs
3/4 cup of sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup of pumpkin pie filling
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp of allspice
1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg
1 tbsp of vanilla

Beat this with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes until it's creamy and smooth. Pour into the pie pan and bake for about 35-45 minutes. Let it cool and refrigerate for 4-5 hours. We topped it with sifted icing sugar and a design we made of cocoa powder, But whipped cream dollops would be awesome too. Thank God it turned out to be so delicious and I can put the shame brownies behind me for good! Possibly though, this turned out to be the most magical cheesecake ever because I had one of my beautiful Ladygirls standing right beside me the whole way through it! I guess you won't know until you make your own. Happy Thanksgiving to my wonderful American friends, and I'll be thinking of you and wishing you many blessings this week!