Pumpkin cheesecake

Cooking pumpkin cheesecake is an incredibly tender, tasty and satisfying delicacy. One small piece is enough to not only enjoy this dessert, but also to get enough. Pumpkin puree in the filling will give her tenderness and color, but the aroma of the cheesecake will still be orange-vanilla - so we will cheat and mask not everyone's favorite pumpkin flavor.

For a shortbread base, you only need three ingredients: any shortbread or sweet cracker, butter, and unsweetened cocoa powder. Forget about margarine and spread! The base of the filling is cream cheese. Originally, this cheese is Philadelphia, but recently it has simply disappeared from the shelves of Belarusian stores. That is why I use a product called Cream Cheese of local production - it is in no way inferior to foreign counterparts, and the price is quite reasonable.

Also, the cheesecake filling contains medium-sized raw chicken eggs, sugar (can be replaced with powdered sugar), vanilla sugar and orange zest for flavor, fatty sour cream (it turns out very tasty with heavy cream, but I was too lazy to make them)

Ingredients

• Sand base:
• Shortbread cookies (100 grams)
• Butter(50 grams)
• Cocoa powder (15 grams)
• Filling:
• Cream cheese(500 grams)
• Pumpkin puree(250 grams)
• SugarSugar(150 grams)
• Chicken eggs(2 pieces)
• Sour creamSour cream(50 grams)
• Corn starch (25 grams)
• Vanilla SugarVanilla Sugar (1 tablespoon)
• Orange peel(1 tablespoon)

Directions

1. The recipe for a fragrant, tasty and satisfying cheesecake includes the following ingredients: shortbread cookies, cream cheese, granulated sugar, vanilla sugar, cornstarch, butter, cocoa powder, sour cream, chicken eggs and orange peel. All products must be (!) At room temperature, so take them out of the refrigerator in advance and leave them on the kitchen table.
2. We immediately turn on the oven to warm up to 180 degrees. In the meantime, let's prepare the base for the cheesecake. We take 100 grams of any shortbread cookie and, in a convenient way, turn it into small crumbs along with 15 grams of unsweetened cocoa powder. If you wish, you can safely replace a simple shortbread cookie with cocoa with ready-made chocolate chip cookies - you get the same thing.
3. Most of all, I like to prepare the base for cheesecakes in a blender (attachment - a metal knife): I broke the cookies, literally 20 seconds and the crumb is ready. If you don't have such a blender, you can break the cookies, put them in a bag and roll them with a rolling pin. So, when the cookies and cocoa powder turn into crumbs (adjust the degree of grinding to your own taste), add 50 grams of butter. You can melt it in advance (on the stove or in the microwave), let it cool to room temperature, or use a soft one (let it rest at room temperature beforehand). Combine the sand crumbs with butter and mix everything thoroughly with your hands (with a spoon / fork), if you just cook in a bowl. In a blender, we punch everything very quickly so that the mass does not turn out to be tight and dense.
4. As a result, small crumbs will absorb the oil and get such lumps. Do not interfere for a long time, it is useless.
5. We take a split form (with a diameter of 16-20 cm - I have 18 cm), the bottom of which is covered with baking paper. We shift the chocolate chips into it and gently level it with our fingers. You can help yourself with an ordinary glass - we go through the bottom of the future pumpkin cheesecake, slightly thickening and smoothing it. We put the form with the workpiece in an oven preheated to 180 degrees on a medium level and bake for about 10-15 minutes. During this time, the sand base should grab. If this is not done, the moisture from the filling will simply be absorbed into the chocolate layer and it will soften.
6. In the meantime, let's get to the filling for the cheesecake. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin puree (250 grams), granulated sugar (150 grams) and vanilla sugar (1 tablespoon). In addition, I highly recommend using orange zest, which will help mask the subtle, but still pumpkin flavor. Remove the zest from the orange using a fine grater (only carefully so as not to touch the white layer - it is bitter).
7. Mix everything thoroughly so that the sweet crystals are completely dissolved. Add 500 grams of cream cheese at room temperature.
8. At this stage, you can (and even should) use a hand blender, if you have one. Thanks to such an assistant, the filling in the finished cheesecake will turn out to be perfectly smooth and uniform. We punch sweet pumpkin puree with cream cheese until everything turns into a single whole.
9. Then, one at a time, introduce raw chicken eggs (2 pieces) at room temperature. Stir (with a spoon or fork) the first into the filling, achieving a homogeneous mass, only then add the second egg. You cannot whisk, as in this case air bubbles will appear in the mass, and they are useless in the cheesecake.
10. Add 50 grams of sour cream and 25 grams of corn starch (can be replaced with 20 grams of potato starch). We grind everything until smooth so that there are no lumps left.
11. The result is an absolutely smooth and silky cheese-pumpkin filling, which in texture and consistency resembles very, very soft butter.
12. During this time, the chocolate shortbread base for our future dessert also managed to bake. We take out the form from the oven and let the cake cool down to room temperature. Now it's very cold outside, so to speed up the process, you can take the form out to the balcony for 5-10 minutes. Then we wrap the form with food foil in 3-4 layers so that we get a waterproof armor. The fact is that we will cook the cheesecake in a water bath, so it is important that water cannot penetrate into the mold. We do not turn off the oven itself, but only lower the temperature to 160 degrees.
13. We build a water bath, which is necessary for baking cheesecake (in this case, it will bake evenly, will not rise or crack). To do this, place the mold with the future cheesecake in a deep dish (mold or baking sheet) of a larger size.
14. We shift the cheese-pumpkin filling onto a shortbread base. You see what its consistency is - the mass does not spread, retains its shape, while it is smooth and incredibly tender.
15. We level the creamy mass with a spoon or spatula. Pour boiling water into a large dish so that the water level reaches the middle of the height of the dish with the dessert.
16. We put the structure in a hot oven at a medium level and cook at 160 degrees for 60-75 minutes. Cooking times will vary depending on your oven and may vary. We check the readiness of the pumpkin cheesecake: if you slightly push the dish with the dessert, its center will shake slightly (like jelly). Turn off the oven, take out the cheesecake mold from the water bath and leave it in the oven already turned off with the door ajar for an hour and a half.
17. After that, let the dessert cool completely on the table to room temperature. Basically, the pumpkin cheesecake is ready, but it still needs time to ripen. To do this, tighten the top of the mold with cling film and put the dessert in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours, or even better overnight.
18. During this time, the cheese filling will thicken and the dessert can be served. To gently remove it from the mold, take a long thin knife, heat it in hot water, quickly dry it with a towel and run it along the side. This separates the cheesecake from the walls of the mold. Remove the split ring. You can use two scoops to transfer the cheesecake itself to a flat dish or plate. Or, alternatively, do the following: cover the cheesecake with something flat (I have a plastic cutting board), gently but quickly turn the dessert onto it. Remove the bottom of the dish with baking paper and cover with a plate on which we will serve the dessert. Turn the structure over again - our delicious homemade cheesecake is ready to serve!