Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Cheesecake

My farm fresh pumpkin!

Start by removing the top stem from the pumpkin, removing the seeds and cutting into equal halves.  Bake both halves of the pumpkin in the oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour.


Pumpkin Soup

1/2 cooked pumpkin
1 cup of chicken broth
1/2 cup of half and half
3 tablespoons of maple syrup
1 teaspoon of Penzey's Pumpkin Pie Spice (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves)
dash of salt

Spoon out cooked pumpkin pulp.  In a blender combine pulp, broth, half and half, syrup, pumpkin pie spice and salt.  Blend everything together until smooth.

Pour contents into a saucepan and cook until heated.  Serve hot.

Serves 6

Results: Yummy Soup!

A yummy pumpkin soup that was neither too creamy nor too sweet.  Vegetable broth might have been better to use but I only had chicken on hand.  Still it was pretty yummy.  I got this recipe off thepioneerwoman.com.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

1/2 cooked pumpkin
16 oz of cream cheese
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon of Penzey's Pumpkin Pie Spice (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
20 oreo cookies
4 tablespoons of butter
whipped cream for topping

For the crust, crush up oreos.  A food processor would probably work best for this but I don't own one so I tried to use the blender.  It didn't really work so my pie crust was a little chunky.  Add in melted butter.  Mix well and spread out in the bottom of an 8x8 baking dish.

For the filling, spoon out cooked pumpkin pulp.  Combine pumpkin, cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, pumpkin pie spice and salt with an electric mixer one ingredient at a time.  Mix well (I had to put everything in the blender to liquify and combine everything evenly and then moved it back to the electric mixer).

Cover crust with the filling.  Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  Let cool at room temperature and then chill in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.  The brunch was fast approaching so I put it in the freezer for 1 hour.  The edges set but the middle was still a little soft (it needed more time to set).

Serve with whipped cream if desired.

Serves 9

Results: Delicious Cheesecake!  

Even though I didn't have enough time to let it set before serving, it was still delicious.  The oreo crust was a perfect compliment to the cheesecake.  I got this recipe off of myrecipes.com.  I'd never used a whole pumpkin in cooking before and I think both dishes turned out really well, especially the cheesecake.