Mini pumpkin cheesecakes with maple whipped cream

 

Remember when Posh Spice drew more Google searches than pumpkin spice? Yes, this recipe involves pumpkin, and it involves spices. But I assure you, no coffee drinks were adulterated in the process.

 Mini pumpkin cheesecakes with maple whipped cream

Adapted from a recipe posted to the former recipezaar.com many years ago by Michele7. A search of the new food.com site does not turn up the identical recipe, although it does have another version that also purports to be the Cheesecake Factory version, as this one did. The two were noticeably different, both from each other, and from several other recipes alleged to be a copy of the restaurant’s version. I can’t weigh in on that, having never been to a Cheesecake Factory. 

The original recipe was for a full-size cheesecake that served 8. It would make 36 mini cheesecakes using a mini cheesecake pan. While I’ve mixed up the whole recipe and then baked it in three stages in the mini pan, that’s tedious, and generally speaking I don’t need 36 cheesecakes until it’s a big party. So this version is approximately a third of the original, designed to make one batch of 12. If you understandably don’t have a mini cheesecake pan (although they are super fun and make slick work of removing the cakelets), you could try it in muffin tins. I got my pan from King Arthur, but they don't seem to carry it any more. It is still available from Amazon, however.

 Ingredients
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
⅓ cup plus 2 teaspoon sugar, divided
1 (8-ounce package) cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla
⅓ cup canned pumpkin puree
1 egg
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon allspice
Maple whipped cream (see recipe)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cracker crumbs, melted butter and  2 teaspoons sugar in a medium-size bowl. Divide mixture among mini cheesecake pans. Tamp down crumb mixture to flatten. (Love my tart tamper I got from Mom for this purpose!) Place a layer of tinfoil under the pan and place in the oven, unless you really enjoy cleaning up oozed butter from your oven floor. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside to cool while you prepare the filling.

Combine cream cheese, vanilla and 1/3 cup sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth. Add pumpkin, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice and beat until smooth. Divide mixture evenly on top of cracker crusts, using about 2 tablespoons per cheesecake.

Bake for 20 minutes or until just set.  Set pan on a wire rack to cool at least 30 minutes. Run a butter knife around the cakes to carefully loosen them. Lift out and place on a serving plate (or storage box if you’re chilling them to serve later). These gain more structural integrity as they cool, so the tops are less likely to separate from the crust if you give them some chilling time before serving. The tops will sink slightly in the middle as they cool, but a garnish of whipped cream covers that nicely. Serves 12.

Rating: These are wonderfully light, not heavy like pumpkin pie or dense like some baked cheesecakes. Every time I take them to an event, they go over quite well, because, well, they’re cute, super small  and have a nice spice profile.

Maple whipped cream
From Berlyskitchen.com. This makes way more than you’d need for garnishing 12 mini cheesecakes, but as she points out, it can work for serving on pancakes, French toast, hot drinks or cupcakes, and it keeps fairly well made in advance without separating.

Ingredients
1 cup whipped cream
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Mix at low speed until foamy. Then increase speed to medium and beat until stiff peaks form.