Baked Pumpkin Cheesecake—Prototype 13:
 
I decided to bring the crust overhaul of my plain cheesecakes (Prototype 24 there) into this pumpkin prototype. This would also mean omitting the pumpkin butter from the crust, leaving that ingredient to the batter. However, the crust could be spiced up with cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice.

I also felt that the top baking installment was somewhat long (with a rather dark surface), while the lower installments (whose exposed sides looked rather light) could use a little more baking time. So I shifted these times around a little (taking 15 minutes from the top installment and reallocating them among the lower ones).
 
3-Cheese Blend (1CT-1NC-1YG):
Prepare ahead of time 16 ounces of yogurt cheese, derived from one 32-ounce container of nonfat yogurt. If the resulting yogurt cheese falls below 16 ounces, add back enough of the whey (that was strained out from the yogurt) to make up the difference. To this yogurt cheese combine 16 ounces of whipped, lowfat cottage cheese and 16 ounces (two 8-ounce packages) of softened Neufchatel cheese ("light cream cheese").

Grease a 9 1/2" (or 9") springform pan, but do not wrap foil around it yet (see below).

Crust:
4 oz. melted, white chocolate
8 oz. (1 cup) 3-cheese blend (see above)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz. All-Bran, ground up

Place the resulting mixture in the greased pan and pre-bake without tub at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, then cool enough to comfortably touch at least the pan's upper sidewall.

Batter:
1 cup granulated sugar
40 oz. (5 cups) 3-cheese blend (see above)
14 oz. pumpkin butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 teaspoons xanthan gum
6 eggs

Expect close to 8 cups of the resulting batter, but do not add this to the pan all at once. Rather, this needs to be done in four installments. Wrap the pan in foil (or—as an alternative—use a cheesecake pan bath wrap) just before adding the first batter installment (to minimize the foil's disturbance and therefore its leakage risk, do not put it on any earlier).

For each of the first three installments, gently scoop about 2 1/4 cups of batter into the pan, fully covering the surface (here's a tip—scoop small amounts of batter around the edge of the pan, letting this batter flow towards the middle on its own), and then bake this pan with its contents for 30 minutes, at 325 degrees. However, at the end of the third installment's 30 minutes, add on another 30 minutes of baking time, but only at 300 degrees (that's a 60 minute "baking installment"—the first 30 minutes at 325 degrees and the next 30 at 300). For these three installments here, bake with the pan in a tub filled with at least 1/4 to 1/2 inch of boiling water, but (to reduce spillage risks) do not fill the tub all the way at this point, because the whole tub-and-pan assembly is going to need to be removed from the oven (in order to comfortably add contents to the pan) between installments.

After these first three installments are done, there should be about 1 1/4 cups of batter left, with 120 minutes of baking time reached at this point (30 minutes for each of the first two installments, and 60 for the third one). Now comes the fourth installment—carefully add the last of this batter on top of the pan's earlier installments, fully coating the entire surface. Next, return the entire pan-and-tub assembly to the oven, with the temperature remaining at 300 degrees. At this point, fill up the tub generously with boiling water. Resume baking for another 90 minutes (based upon usage of a 9 1/2" pan).

Afterward, shut the oven off, and leave its door slightly ajar, with the cheesecake still inside—and in the tub—for an hour. Next, remove the cheesecake from the oven and tub. Continue to cool it down at room temperature for another two hours. After doing so, remove the cheesecake from pan and refrigerate.

Pumpkin Cheesecake—Prototype 13 (1) Pumpkin Cheesecake—Prototype 13 (2)

Now that looks better!

I used cinnamon to spice up the crust when I made this particular prototype for the first time. The second time around I used pumpkin pie spice—a blend of cinnamon, ginger, lemon peel, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom—from Trader Joe's.

I made both of these cheesecakes in late November of 2023 (within a week of each other), the first one for a church potluck, the second for Thanksgiving Day with my cousins.


Limited OOPS Edition!

In late November of 2024, I made this cheesecake for an early-week Thanksgiving dinner at my Home Depot workplace—where I had a past position in the Paint department (I later transferred to Electrical), which sold some "OOPS" paints, these items having had wrong outcomes (such as inaccurate color matches), thus being offered at big discounts.

Well, I ended up making a mistake with my latest pumpkin cheesecake. I FORGOT to ADD the granulated sugar to the batter before I started baking it!! At some earlier point, I measured out the cup. Then I set it aside in a not-so-visible spot, out of reminder sight. Typically, I would check off ingredients with little "dash" strokes. I especially checked off dry ones upon measurement (which I often did ahead of time). But measuring is one step. Adding the ingredient to the mixture is another! That was where I failed. I did not notice my error until just before pouring in the last batter installment, into which I mixed the entire cup of sugar. So the top seemed to come out sort of caramelized. But how did the lower installment "layers" taste? Would this "OOPS" cheesecake still work out okay?

This wasn't the first time that I made such a forgetful mistake. A similar incident occurred about six years earlier. That was with my 8th chocolate peanut butter prototype, back in September of 2018.

I ended up having a couple of slices of this pumpkin cheesecake. The taste was scarcely sweet if I picked solely at the lower installment layers. But if I combined them with the upper, sweeter installment layer in individual bites, the overall taste was hopefully sweet enough, even without including the crust. The experience was likely better than eating a dry, non-pre-sweetened cereal combined with consumer-added sugar—for me, that wasn't quite the same as enjoying a pre-sweetened cereal for breakfast—too much of the sugar that I sprinkled on would end up falling to the bottom of the bowl (but I managed to put up with this many times in my "take-it-or-leave-it" childhood).

Pumpkin Cheesecake—Prototype 13 (OOPS)

Lesson learned—Do NOT use simple strokes to mark ingredients! Use something like "M" for "measured" and "A" for "added", and double-check and make sure that every ingredient gets that "A" before proceeding further!

On a more favorable note, I made another pumpkin cheesecake a just few days afterward, and this one came out right, correctly-added granulated sugar and all. I brought it on Thanksgiving Day itself to Audrey, a "distant relative" (?) in Rhode Island (more specifically, a first cousin of the husband of one of my own first cousins). The dessert was nicely appreciated there.


Pumpkin Cheesecake—Prototype 13 (corrected)
 

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