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a deep yellow cheesecake with a piece removed and another piece cut on the plate to show the inside
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4.67 from 3 votes

Pumpkin Cheesecake

If you’re out to impress with your next dessert, or you’re looking for a Thanksgiving alternative to pumpkin pie, I can’t recommend a steam oven pumpkin cheesecake highly enough.
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time2 hours 12 minutes
Chilling Time4 hours
Total Time6 hours 27 minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: pumpkin cheesecake
Servings: 10
Calories: 567kcal

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Put the pumpkin puree, sugar and spices into a pan and cook, stirring often, over medium heat until it’s thickened and glossy. Set aside to cool while you make the base.
  • Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F, fan forced/conventional setting. Grease a 22cm/9in springform cake pan and line the base with baking paper.
  • Mix the cookie crumbs, sugar and melted butter together and press over the base of your prepared cake pan. Bake for 12 minutes, then remove from oven and set aside to cool.
  • Put the cooled pumpkin mixture into the bowl of a food processor with the salt, cream and cream cheese, and run the processor until everything is very smooth. Add the eggs and process again until smooth. Don’t over-process here, as you don’t want lots of air bubbles in the finished cheesecake.
  • Pour the filling over the baked and cooled base and cover the pan with a layer of aluminium foil (this will stop drips of condensation from the top of the steam oven ruining the top of your cake). Put the cake in your steam oven and set to 95°C/203°F, steam setting. Steam until the cake is set through, with a very slight wobble in the centre, about 2 hours. Cool to room temperature in the switched-off oven, then transfer to the refrigerator and chill for at least 4 hours, or preferably overnight, before serving with crème fraiche, mascarpone or whipped cream.

Notes

  1. Most types of ginger cookie will work for the base here, or you could just go with a straight up graham cracker crust. My preference is for a hard, crunchy cookie that’s a supermarket standard in Australia, called a gingernut. They make great crumbs which stay slightly crispy in the baked cheesecake for several days.
  2. Staying with the ginger theme, we love the stuff around here and that’s reflected in the amount of ground ginger in the filling. If you aren’t so sold on it, cut the ginger back to half a teaspoon instead.
  3. Don’t be tempted to make this without a springform pan, you’ll never get the cake out of a regular pan in one piece. And if, like mine, your springform is a little old and the base doesn’t seal up that well, wrap a layer of foil around it so nothing leaks out into your oven during steaming. Experience shows that a greasy film puddled in the base of your oven after cooking is not much fun to clean up.
  4. Your cooked cheesecake will keep for up to three days in the fridge (well, longer, really, but the crust will go soft eventually). I suspect you might be able to freeze an entire finished cake to thaw and serve when you need it, but I haven’t tried because, well, we kept eating or giving away the test versions! If you want to try freezing, I’d bake a trial cake and freeze a single slice to see how it holds up, before you commit yourself to a whole cake.

Nutrition

Calories: 567kcal | Carbohydrates: 47g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 39g | Saturated Fat: 22g | Cholesterol: 197mg | Sodium: 375mg | Potassium: 296mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 30g | Vitamin A: 7189IU | Vitamin C: 2mg | Calcium: 123mg | Iron: 3mg