Oh, it is so pumpkin time: Pumpkin Cheesecake

Bourbon-Pumpkin Cheesecake is just one of the many reasons I love Emmanuelle. She has perfected this cheesecake and so kindly guided me through the process. So, even though the whole of America is between us, we can still bake a cake together.

This recipe takes some time, but it isn't difficult. And, it definitely has the wow-factor.

First, for the crust, get together your white and brown sugars, pecans, butter, and graham cracker crumbs.
For the graham crackers, I use the mini-food processor attachment that came with my immersion blender. I love this attachment and I use it all the time. So if you are in the market for an immersion blender, spend a little extra and get this attachment.
Mix the ingredients together.
Press that into the pan. You are actually supposed to make it go up the side a little bit, which I totally forgot to do. Then, chill the crust for an hour.
For the filling, get out your ingredients. A few key players:
Whisk together the wet ingredients sans cream cheese.
(That orange! I adore pumpkin season.)

Next, whisk together your dry ingredients. And, yes, of course, there is nutmeg in here.
Add the room temperature cream cheese to the dry ingredients. And, yes, the cream cheese has to be at room temperature for a fluffy cake.
Now, add in the pumpkin mixture. How gorgeous is this color?
Time to pour it into your spring form pan.


Bake it for 50-60 minutes. How do you know when it is done? You apparently should not ask me. I baked it for 50 minutes at exactly 350, only to find out when I cut into it that it hadn't quite set all the way through. It was still delicious, but a little more custard-y in the middle than cheesecake-y. The directions say 'bake until just set'. So, try that.
Leave the oven on, remove the cheesecake to a rack, and make your sour cream topping. Put the topping on the cake and bake it for 5 more minutes.
Remove it to a rack and the baking process is at an end.
Let the cheesecake cool for 3 hours, cover it, and pop it in the frig. For the covering, I prefer foil. I hate hate hate seran wrap, but decided to try it anyways. Big mistake: it stuck to the top. So, I eventually swapped the seran wrap for foil and this worked much better.

When you want to serve it, let it come up to room temperature with the springform on. And then... Time to be brave.
Unspring it. This part went smoothly, surprisingly. Emmanuelle told me to go slow and it worked without a hitch. Now, garnish it with pecans. And, yes, this pattern is also Emmanuelle-inspired.
Lovely! Delicious!
Thank you, Emmanuelle!

Bourbon-Pumpkin Cheesecake (adapted from Emmanuelle and epicurious.com)
Ingredients
For crust:
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (five 4 3/4 by 2 1/4 inch crackers) [1.5x= 7.5 crackers]*
1/2 cup pecans (1 3/4 ounces), finely chopped [1.5x=3/4 cup or 2.6 ounces]
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar [1.5x=1/4 cup 2 Tbs]
1/4 cup granulated sugar [1.5x=1/4 cup 2 Tbs]
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled [1.5x=6 Tbs]

For filling
1 15 oz can pumpkin**
3 large eggs
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 Tablespoon heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tablespoon bourbon
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
3 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, at room temperature

For topping:
2 cups sour cream (20 ounces)
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon bourbon

Garnish: pecan halves

Directions
To make crust, invert bottom of a 9-inch springorm pan, then lock on side and butter pan. Stir together crumbs, pecans, sugar, and butter in a bowl until combined well. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom and 1/2 inch up side of pan, then chill crust, 1 hour.***

For the filling, put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350. Whisk together pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, cream, vanilla, and bourbon in a bowl until combined. Stir together granulated sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt in a large bowl. Add cream cheese and beat with an electric mixer at high speed until creamy and smooth, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium, then add pumpkin mixture and beat until smooth.

Pour filling into crust, smoothing top, then put springform pan in a shallow baking pan (in case springform pan leaks). Bake until center is just set, 50 to 60 minutes.**** Transfer to rack and cool 5 minutes. Leave oven on.

Meanwhile, make the topping. Whisk together sour cream, sugar, and bourbon in a bowl. Then spread on top of cheesecake and bake 5 minutes.

Cool cheesecake completely in pan on rack, about 3 hours.

Chill, covered with foil, until cold, at least 4 hours.***** Bring to room temperature before serving. Remove springform and garnish with pecans.

Can be chilled, covered, up to 2 days.

*Emmanuelle recommends doing 1.5x the crust epicurious.com calls for
** epicurious.com calls for 1 1/2 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin, but a whole can is 1 3/4 cups, so Emmanuelle says why not use it all?
***For this part, Emmanuelle recommends pouring 3/4 of the crumbs into the bottom and patting that down. Then, take the 1/4 remaining and line the edge of the pan with it. I failed to do this.
****I baked it for 50 minutes at exactly 350 degrees. It needed to go longer. I will try 55 minutes next time. Emmenualle says she has never actually overcooked it.
*****Foil is better for covering it than seran wrap, so it doesn't stick to the top of the cheesecake.

It is pumpkin time: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Well, fall has arrived here in Riverside, California. Yes, the temperature is finally back in double digits. And even though it is still around 95 degrees, it almost feels like sweater weather.

And nothing says sweater weather and fall like pumpkin. And nothing says pumpkin like pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

This recipe is nice if you don't have time to let your butter get up to room temperature, because it just calls for canola oil. (Although, you still need your eggs at room temperature.)

I mixed the dry ingredients first. The cinnamon-ginger-nutmeg-cloves combination is glorious isn't it?
And, as always, I used freshly grated nutmeg because you really can tell a difference. So get yourself some whole nutmeg, break out your microplane grater, and get a-gratin'.
(While the microplane in this picture is a 'spice' grater, you can use your zester grater as well. And if you don't have any microplane at all, get one. It will change your life.)

Once the dry ingredients were mixed, it was time for the wet ingredients. I started by beating my brown sugar and eggs for 2 minutes.
Yes, I timed it.
Next, beat in the pumpkin, vanilla, and oil. I love the pale orange here.
Then, in with the flour, that I stirred until just incorporated.
Now, one of my favorite parts: the chocolate chips. Recently, Cook's Illustrated did a taste test of chocolate chips. And guess what, Nestle Toll-house was actually 'not-recommended'. On the top of their list were Ghiradelli 60% cacao chips. They taste like really good chocolate. Delicious.
So, in went the 'superior' chips.
Once that was just mixed, it was time to put them on the cookie sheet. Now the recipe I used called for either a small ice cream scoop or a 1/4 cup measure. And, as a good recipe follower, I took out my ice cream scoop and as soon as I put the first mound on the baking sheet I realized these were going to be enormous cookies. But why not have a little celebration? So I carried on.
Into the oven for 15 minutes. And out they came, smelling like fall and looking wonderful.
If you have ever had a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, you know that they aren't really cookie-like. They are more like cake meets pancake meets muffin meets cookie-form. They are wonderful, mind you, but be willing to meet these 'cookies' on their terms.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from joyofbaking.com)
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon (I make it a slightly heaping tsp)
1/2 tsp ground ginger (again, slightly heaping is nice)
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup canola or corn oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup (215 grams) canned pumpkin puree
1 cup chocolate chips (like Ghiradelli 60% cacao or semi-sweet)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment.

In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.

In a different large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until light and smooth (about 2 minutes). Beat in the oil, vanilla extract, and pumpkin. Add the flour mixture and beat until just incorporated. Using 1/4 cup of batter (use a small ice cream scoop or measuring cup) place small mounds of batter onto prepared baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart.**

Bake for about 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cookie comes out clean.** Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 18 cookies.

**If you are making smaller cookies, i.e. normal size cookies, you will want to decrease the baking time. My guess is 10-12 minutes, but that is only a guess.

Lasagna and Lessons Learned

Maybe the fact that the Vegetarian Lasagna recipe in Joy of Cooking calls for 6 pounds of eggplant and zucchini would phase some cooks. Not me. I didn't even bat an eye when I wrote 'eggplant (3 pounds) and zucchini (3 pounds)' on my grocery list. "Why?", you ask. Because I am devoted recipe-follower.

There are several reasons for this. First, I am my mother's daughter.

The second reason, and one I have only realized recently, has to do with this stage in my culinary life. Right now, I am learning how to cook. I am learning about techniques (Oh my, I love to chiffonade). I am learning about ingredients (What, you can make your own creme fraiche?). And I am learning about flavor combinations (Wait, peaches and tomatoes?). At the end of the day, I don't think I can become a better cook without understanding these basics of cooking. Before getting crazy and grating nutmeg all over everything, I should know why you use nutmeg, what recipes traditionally call for it, and what other ingredients it compliments. And one terrific way to learn is by following recipes from other cooks who have the experience and knowledge that I don't yet have.

Third, I like keeping track of what works and doesn't work, so one day I can have 'classic recipes'. You know, those tried and true recipes that you just own. If you follow a recipe once and you don't like it, you can keep track of what you didn't like and adjust it the next go round. I find when I just wing it, whether it works out well or horribly, it is incredibly difficult to repeat.

So, back to the lasagna that calls for 6 pounds of veggies... Well 6 1/2 pounds if you count the extra mushrooms I threw in. Apparently, 6 1/2 pounds of veggies may be a tad too much. In fact, there were so many veggies in this lasagna, I couldn't even fit in the last layer of pasta. But, this is good to know, next time I make veggie lasagna maybe I will shoot for 3-4 pounds of veggies. Consider my Joy of Cooking so annotated. See, isn't following recipes fun?!

Here's the making of it. I mostly followed the Joy of Cooking recipe, although I did take advice from a friend on the layering part. (She suggests that having veggies on the bottom provides more stability to the whole lasagna.)

First for the veggies. Did I mention there were 6 1/2 pounds of them?
I chopped them up.


Then it was time to roast them. I started to pile them onto my baking sheets. Only to quickly realize that if I wanted them to be in a single layer (which is a must for roasting), two sheets was definitely not enough.
Look at all that was left over.
So, in order to follow the recipe, I had to do two rounds of roasting,
and sauteed the mushrooms.
This ended up tacking on quite a bit of time. So lesson learned: when living somewhere without two ovens, only include the amount of veggies that will fit on two baking sheets. My guess is around 3-4 pounds.

While the veggies threatened to take everything over, I made the ricotta mixture. Have you met my cheese grater? This is the OXO Good Grips cheese grater. This is the best cheese grater ever. Because, you see that little box on the bottom? You perch your grater on top of that box, and it measures and catches your cheese as you grate it. Once you are done, remove the box, and you can either use the grated cheese, or pop the lid on the box and put it in the frig. Seriously, I love this tool.
For the ricotta mixture: ricotta, eggs, parmesan, salt, pepper, and nutmeg(!). See, if you read up on nutmeg, you learn that it loves things like ricotta mixtures.

Once I boiled my pasta, I got my assembly line ready.
Veggies, sauce, mozzarella, noodles, ricotta, repeat.

So, veggies.
Sauce. I always have the problem of under-saucing, and even this time, I used almost twice as much as Joy of Cooking called for and it still wasn't quite enough.
Mozza... oh wait, I misread the directions and did ricotta. Not dire, by any means, but it did get a little pink.
Noodles,
The mozzarella that was supposed to be ricotta.
And I repeated it until I got to what was supposed to be the final pasta layer. Much to my recipe-following chagrin, there was absolutely no room left for those last three noodles.
6 1/2 pounds of veggies will apparently do that to you. Then again, I did use a layering technique not in the Joy of Cooking, so perhaps I oughtn't blame the recipe.
So, I finished it off with some cheese, prayed that I wouldn't drop it, and popped/lugged it in the oven. 30 minutes covered with foil, 20 minutes without the foil. And, voila:
Come on, now. Look at that goodness.
Some lasagna, some salad (arugula with pear and gorgonzola), and an Italian red-blend: who wouldn't want this for dinner?
Garnished with some fresh basil, my 6-1/2-pounds-of-vegetables-lasagna was fantastic.
The many lessons learned:
-6 1/2 pounds of veggies is too much for a 13x9x2 pan. Include only as many vegetables as can be roasted on 2 baking sheets (about 3-4 pounds)
-if you do use 6 1/2 pounds of vegetables and you want all the layers of pasta in, try with the pasta on the bottom
-even if you can't include that last layer of pasta, this lasagna is delicious
-assembly lines for lasagna are brilliant
-you don't have to feel bound to eggplant and zucchini, you could use almost any vegetable that you wanted as long as it roasts well: peppers, summer squash, onions...
-if you want a sauce-y lasagna, don't follow normal directions; they call for very little sauce. For this lasagna, two 24-oz jars of marinara would have been ideal. Maybe a little less if you are doing fewer veggies
-when you cover your lasagna with tin foil, it helps to spray one side with Pam. This way, the melted cheese won't stick to the foil.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna (adapted from Joy of Cooking)
Ingredients:
Eggplants (about 3 pounds), cut into 1/2 inch slices (I used Chinese eggplants, but if you use a globe eggplant, quarter it length-wise) (I would go with 1 1/2 pounds)
6 medium zucchini (about 3 pounds), cut in 1/2 inch slices (again, I would go with 1 1/2 pounds)
8 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
4 cups shredded mozzarella
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 24 oz jars of marinara
15 oz ricotta
2 eggs
1/2 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly grated black pepper
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (or to taste)
1 pounds dry lasagna

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450. Grease a 13x9 pan. Toss the vegetables with 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp black pepper. Divide the vegetables between several baking sheets, spreading them in a single layer. Roast for 15 minutes. Toss the vegetables and continue to roast until well browned and soft, 15-2o minutes more. Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl.

Reduce the oven temperature to 375. Cook pasta in a large pot of salted, boiling water, stirring occasionally for 6-7 minutes, until barely tender. Drain the past and run cold water over it. Separate and blot it dry.

In a medium bowl, stir together the ricotta, eggs, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and nutmeg.

Get all your lasagna components in a row. Spread a thin layer of sauce over the bottom of the prepared pan. Cover with a layer of pasta, slightly overlapping. Spread with one-third of the ricotta mixture. Sprinkle one-quarter of the mozzarella and grated Parmesan over the ricotta. Spoon one-third of the roasted vegetables on top and then add 1/2 cup of sauce (I added almost 1 cup). Add another layer of pasta and continue layering the lasagna until you have 4 layers of pasta and 3 layers of filling. Spread the remaining sauce on top and sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan. [see below for alternative layering technique]. Dot with butter (optional).

Spray aluminum foil with Pam , cover the pan with the foil (Pam side down), and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and continue to bake until golden and bubbly, 15-20 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. Garnish with basil or parsley.

Alternative layering technique: 1/3 of the veggies, about 1 cup of sauce, 1/4 of the mozzarella and Parmesan, pasta, 1/3 of the ricotta, 1/3 of the veggies, about 1 cup of sauce, 1/4 mozzarella and Parmesan, pasta, 1/3 of the ricotta, 1/3 of the veggies, about 1 cup of sauce, 1/4 of the mozzarella and Parmesan, pasta, sauce, 1/4 of the mozzarella and Parmesan. (Note: I did not get this last layer of pasta in).