America’S Test Kitchen
With a tangy, rich flavour and velvety consistency, cheesecake’s characteristic qualities make it well-suited to variation: Lemon cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, and berry cheesecake are all common. But our favourite variation might just be pumpkin cheesecake.
We love the way the tangy cream cheese offsets the warm-spiced pumpkin, and we set out to create a streamlined version in the form of a pumpkin cheesecake bar.
To avoid a soggy, heavy bar, we knew the key would be to remove excess moisture from the canned pumpkin, so we cooked the puree on the stovetop to reduce it. This step also concentrated its flavour and enhanced its sweetness so it wasn’t overshadowed by the cream cheese.
Adding pumpkin pie spice to the puree as it cooked allowed its flavour to bloom. We thought a gingersnap crust would be a fitting match for the pumpkin filling; but while the flavour of the crust was great, we found that the crushed gingersnaps baked up unappealingly hard.
To get the flavour of gingersnaps without the tooth-breaking snap we used the traditional graham crackers and simply added ground ginger to the crackers to spice them up.
Pumpkin cheesecake bars
Servings: 24
Start to finish: 3 hours
1 (15-ounce) can unsweetened pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
15 whole graham crackers, broken into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) plus 1 1/3 cups (9 1/3 ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1 pound cream cheese, softened 1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract 4 large eggs, room temperature Cook pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until reduced to 1 1/2 cups, 6 to 8 minutes. Let pumpkin mixture cool for one hour.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 F. Make foil sling