Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake

I know, I know. You're probably sick of pumpkin and pumpkin spice by now. The good news: you only have to put up with it for about another month. However, I highly suggest you try this cheesecake while pumpkin is in. Because let's be honest: as soon as pumpkin goes out of season, you're likely to miss it.

So this past weekend was my neighborhood's trick-or-treat. We get HUNDREDS of kids. If someone is giving out candy, they better stock up or else they'll be out within twenty minutes. Every year I come across a house where the resident had to run to the store to refill.

(Yes, I still dress up. Don't judge me.)

My friend Karissa and me handing out candy to the little trick-or-treat-ers. (Bonus points if you can guess Karissa's costume!)

I usually have friends over during this time, so I knew I needed to have some sort of fall treat that wasn't candy.

And what's better than pumpkin cheesecake?

I already have a fabulous cheesecake recipe, but, unfortunately, I didn't have all of the ingredients to make that. So I came up with a simpler recipe. This one tastes like cheesecake, but also tastes like pumpkin pie (which my other recipe does not taste like).

The crust is pretty much a simple shortbread. 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup powdered sugar, 1/8 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 cup of softened butter all mixed together and set in an 8x8 pan.

The cheesecake is different than my other cheesecake because I use less creamy stuff. This cheesecake calls for 8 oz of low-fat cream cheese (although you could use regular), 1/2 cup sugar. 1 egg, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 2/3 cup pumpkin puree.

Mix it all together, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, and you get this nice, creamy filling that tastes like pumpkin pie in cheesecake form.

Let me tell you, it was a big hit with my friends and family.

Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake

Ingredients:

Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup softened butter

Cheesecake:

8 oz low fat cream cheese (the kind that starts with an "n;" you could also use regular cream cheese)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2/3 cup pumpkin puree

Directions:

Place flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, and butter in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer. You should have a pasty mixture when your dough is ready.

Spray a 8x8 pan with non-stick cooking spray. Put the dough into the pan and press to cover the bottom (and if you can, go part way up the sides). Make sure there's no holes!

Bake crust at 350 degrees for about twelve minutes.

While crust is baking, cream the cheese and sugar in a bowl with the electric mixer. Once creamy, add the egg and beat until mixed. After that, add the spice, vanilla, and pumpkin and beat until everything is mixed and creamy.

When the crust is done, remove from the oven and pour the filling in.

Bake the cheesecake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Let cool, then place in fridge overnight, then serve and enjoy!

So be honest: are you really sick of pumpkin spice?

Cheers!

Molly

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin. It’s in the air, it’s in your food, and it’s possibly all over your social media pages. The good news: we only have to deal with it till the end of November. The bad news: we only have until the end of November to enjoy all of the pumpkin-y goodness. (What can I say? Pumpkin and I have a love-hate relationship.)

If you’ve been reading my breakfast posts, you know I’ve been banned from making pumpkin breakfasts. Well, because of my awesome pumpkin crepe recipe that I made for dinner a couple weeks ago, I thought I was allowed to make pumpkin breakfasts again. Apparently I was wrong; Kyle just hates pumpkin (unless it’s made into dessert).

Oh well. Mom and I still loved this week’s pumpkin breakfast.

I found this recipe on pinterest and knew I had to try it. I mean, it had pumpkin AND chocolate. However, I can’t make anything without giving the recipe my own little tweak. So here’s my spin on the recipe:

First, gather your ingredients. This includes your basics like flour, eggs, and vanilla. But it also has some unexpected ingredients like stevia, applesauce, and Greek yogurt.

Mix up the dry ingredients in a large bowl, save for the chocolate chips (these come in later). Now, if you’ve been reading my breakfast posts, you know that I’ve been mixing up the dry ingredients the night before to save time. Well, this week I forgot to do that. (Thankfully I was awake enough to complete the full recipe.)

In a separate bowl, mix up your wet ingredients.

When the wet ingredients are mixed together, add the dry ingredients. Stir until combined.

Once the ingredients are all combined, carefully stir in the chocolate chips.

Line a muffin tin with papers and spray the papers with nonstick cooking spray (or just spray the tin and forget the papers). Pour enough batter into each cup until it’s about 2/3 of the way full. Then bake until done, let cool for a few minutes, and enjoy the deliciousness.

They are warm, fluffy, and the chocolate chips melt in your mouth. I am addicted and I cannot fathom how my brother can't like them. But then again, we don’t agree on a lot of things.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients

3 eggs

½ cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt

16 oz pumpkin puree

¾ cup milk (I used 2%)

1 ½ cups unsweetened applesauce

½ tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp liquid stevia
1 Tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

8 oz dark chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients (except for the chocolate chips; leave those for later).

In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients. Once the wet ingredients are combined, stir in the dry ingredients and mix until everything is incorporated.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Line a muffin tin with papers and spray the papers with non-stick cooking spray (or don’t use the papers and just spray the tins really well). Pour enough batter in so that the cups are filled about 2/3 of the way.

Bake muffins for approximately 18 minutes. Check for doneness by sticking a toothpick in the middle and pulling out; if the toothpick is clean, they’re done baking. If the toothpick comes out dirty, stick the muffins back in the oven for another couple minutes.

Wait a couple minutes for the muffins to cool, then eat and enjoy the heavenly, warm, chocolate-pumpkin combination.

Makes about 2 ½ dozen muffins.

Nutrition facts (according to Calorie Count)

Calories: 105

Fat: 2.8 g

Sodium: 134

Protein: 3

Cheers!

Molly

Pumpkies

As we all know, it’s officially pumpkin season (and apple season. If you read my apple pancake post, you know what I’m talking about). That means pumpkin EVERYTHING is in season and you can bet your next pay check that you will be seeing at least one thing related to pumpkins every day until December.

To help you out with your little bet, I’ve written a post for my pumpkies recipe. You’re welcome! (And while you’re here, you might as well try the recipe *hint hint*)

So my mom bought a huge can of pumpkin and asked me to make recipes with it so that she could post them on her blog. The first recipe I made was pumpkin cheesecake (and you can check that out here), and the second was what I like to call “pumpkies.”

Before I go into the recipe, here’s a little background story on the name. I was originally going to call them “pumpkin brownies,” but brownies are called brownies because they’re brown. So then I was going to call them “pumpkin blondies,” but that didn’t seem to stick, either. “Pumpkin bars” is just too generic, so voila! the name “pumpkies” was chosen.

Now on to the recipe.

If you’ve read any of my other baking recipes, you probably know by now that I’m all about mixing the dry and wet ingredients separately. This recipe was no different.

Dry ingredients.

Really, this recipe is one of the simplest desserts I’ve ever made. Dry ingredients, wet ingredients, beat ‘em both together, pour into a pan, bake, cool, and eat! I even whipped up half a batch for a Bible study this past weekend without breaking a sweat.

Wet ingredients

Wet and dry ingredients mixed.

This recipe was a big hit with my mom, brother, and grandparents. They even tried to give me “pumpkie” duty along with pumpkin cheesecake duty for Thanksgiving. We’ll have to see.

P.S. I am not giving out my icing recipe because even if I wanted to, I have no idea what went into it. It was an experiment that luckily turned out tasting pretty good. You can top these pumpkies with your own frosting (I would recommend cream cheese frosting or plain old whipped cream) or eat them plain. Or serve them with rice pudding!

I took a half batch of pumpkies to a Bible study this past weekend and they were a big hit! Another girl brought this delicious rice pudding and we discovered that the pumpkies taste GREAT drenched in the rice pudding. So if you have a rice pudding recipe, you might want to consider making that when you make these. Do it. You will not be sorry.

Pumpkies

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ - 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 stick butter, melted

½ cup non-fat plain Greek yogurt

1 cup pumpkin puree

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix up all your dry ingredients (first 7 ingredients). Set aside.

In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Once wet ingredients are mixed, add the dry ingredients and stir until everything is incorporated (do not overmix!).

Bake for approximately 20 minutes (check for doneness with a toothpick).

Let cool completely, then frost if desired or eat plain!

Enjoy!

What are some of your favorite pumpkin recipes?

Pumpkin Crepes

Pumpkin crepes. If you’ve been following along with my breakfast posts, you know that I’ve been having issues making pumpkin pancakes. I have never made crepes before. So what made me decide to try my hand at pumpkin crepes? Honestly, I have no idea.

Thankfully, it was a great decision!

Alright my little chefs. First, gather up your dry ingredients and mix ‘em all together.

Next, add eggs and applesauce and beat until mixed. Once mixed, add milk and water and beat. When everything is mixed together, add the pumpkin and vanilla and beat until combined.

Set the batter in the fridge and let it sit for one hour.

Once the batter has set for an hour, prepare your skillet. Place about ¼ of a tablespoon of coconut oil on a skillet and heat until melted. Then add your batter and smooth it out until it’s a thin pancake.

Sprinkle on some sugary goodness on the wet batter, then flip the crepe and bake for another minute or so.

Place crepes on a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven until you are ready to serve them. (Or if you're going to serve them soon, you can just set them out on a cutting board like I did.)

Spread about a tablespoon of vanilla Greek yogurt down the middle of the crepe, then roll up and serve/eat and enjoy the deliciousness of fall!

Again, if you’ve been following along with my breakfast recipe posts, you know that I’ve been “banned” from making pumpkin breakfasts. Well, I made these for dinner and I needed to use up some leftover pumpkin, so my family just had to suffer. And suffer they did – of full stomachs! They loved the crepes! Kyle, my brother, even came in after his first serving, looked at me, and licked his lips (his way of asking for seconds). So now I’m unbanned from pumpkin breakfasts. Yay!

Pumpkin Crepes

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbsp unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup milk

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

Coconut oil

Cinnamon sugar

Vanilla Greek yogurt (I used nonfat)

Directions

Combine and mix the flour, baking powder, spices, and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs and applesauce and beat with an electric mixer until combined. Once combined, add the milk and water and beat until incorporated. Finally, add the pumpkin and vanilla and beat until the batter is smooth.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in the fridge for one hour.

Once the batter has set for an hour, prepare your skillet by heating apx. 1/4 Tbsp of coconut oil (if you don't have coconut oil, butter should work, too). Once the oil has melted, turn the heat down a but and add about 1/3 cup of the batter to the pan.

In order to make crepes and not pancakes, you need to spread the batter out with a spoon so that it makes a like really thin pancake.You need to work fast because once the batter is on the skillet, it's going to start frying.

Once you've spread out the batter, sprinkle about 1/4 tsp of cinnamon sugar on top of the crepe. 

The crepes only take about 1 - 2 minutes per side. Once they are fried, place on a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven or serve immediately.

When preparing to eat, place the crepe with the cinnamon sugar side down. Add about 2 Tbsp of Greek yogurt down the middle of the crepe. Roll the crepe up and serve!

(Heavenly) Creamy Pumpkin Cheesecake

September is here and that means pumpkin-flavored everything is coming!

I'm sure you've seen this floating around the Internet

 I got really into baking over the summer and I have a whole board on Pinterest full of recipes that I want to try. It’s really weird because I never used to like baking, but all of a sudden I do. A class discussion last week has made me think that maybe baking is my other medium (i.e. my way to get my creativity out when I’m not writing). Whether that’s true or not, however, does not change the fact that I’ve discovered a love for baking.

I mean, I’m waking up before the sun to make my brother pancakes/waffles/muffins, and it’s not just because I’m an awesome big sister!

A couple weeks ago I was nominated to bake the dessert for a dinner at my grandparents’ house. Mom told me to make something pumpkin-y because she’d bought canned pumpkin and needed pumpkin recipes to share on her blog. I decided I wanted to make pumpkin cheesecake because I had a ton of recipes on Pinterest for pumpkin cheesecake.

Cheesecake is amazing. I have a serious addiction to The Cheesecake Factory’s cheesecake. However, cheesecake is also extremely fattening and I was very concerned about using three blocks of cream cheese in a single recipe. So I decided to make up my own recipe by looking at a couple other recipes and changing up the ingredients a bit.

My recipe turned out so well that I am apparently supposed to make it for Thanksgiving dinner.

The crust is made of Oreos mixed with melted butter. Simple enough, but it tastes heavenly. I am way too lazy to clean our blender once it’s dirty, so I ended up mashing up the Oreos for the crust by hand. It took a while, but I was able to get them fine enough for a crust.

Crush up an entire package of Oreos and mix with melted butter

Use as many of the Oreos as you can. I did not heed my own warning, so I
used an entire container of Oreos, minus one.

Once the Oreos and butter were mixed, it was time to form the crust.

 Next was the filling. Like I said, three blocks of cream cheese seemed way too much to me. I opted for one block of cream cheese, one block of reduced fat cream cheese (you know, the kind with the funny name that starts with an “n”) and Greek yogurt. If you’ve read my other recipe posts, you probably think that I have an obsession with Greek yogurt. The answer is yes, I have an obsession with Greek yogurt.

Once the cheeses and yogurt were mixed, eggs, pumpkin, vanilla, and sugar all went into the batter.

There was a moment of slight confusion when I was looking up recipes. I couldn't understand the difference between pumpkin puree and canned pumpkin. Apparently, there is no difference! My mother got a kick out of my confusion.

This is canned pumpkin/pumpkin puree

After all of the ingredients were blended, it was time to fill the Oreo shell.

This cheesecake was my very first cheesecake (besides some low-fat cheesecake bars I’d made a few months back). I had to google how to tell when it was done (because obviously the toothpick trick doesn’t work on cheesecakes). Google said that it needs to be liquidy in the center, but the entire thing was liquidy. It also said that cracking is a sign, so that’s what told me it was done!

It was beautiful. It was delicious. Eating it was like tasting a little piece of heaven. And honestly, although it was pretty time consuming, I will gladly make it again for Thanksgiving just so that I can taste it again!

Recipe

Ingredients

1 package of Oreos

½ cup butter

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt

8 oz cream cheese

8 oz reduced fat cream cheese

2 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Directions

Crush up the Oreos however you prefer (I did mine the old fashioned way with a rolling pin and a bag). Melt the butter in a sauce pan and then stir into the crushed Oreos. Press mixture into bottom and sides of a spring form pan, then cool in freezer for about fifteen minutes. After cooling, bake the crust at 350 degrees for five minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Beat cream cheeses and sugar until creamy, then add the eggs and beat until smooth. Add yogurt, pumpkin, vanilla, and spices and then beat until everything is combined and batter is smooth and creamy. Once the batter is ready, pour into the Oreo crust.

Bake cake at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. It will still be liquidy and jiggle when you tap the sides of the pan, but that’s OK; this cheesecake is creamier than it is thick. Let cool and then place in refrigerator over night.