Savvy & Sweet Bakes: Pumpkin Cheesecake

This year for Thanksgiving I decided to take on the challenge of baking a pumpkin cheesecake.  I tore a recipe out of a magazine (I don't remember which) a couple months back because Hubby G loves anything pumpkin and I was feeling domestic.  I had considered making it awhile back, but then I figured Thanksgiving would be the perfect time to try it out, so I waited.

I was actually a very good little blogger and took pictures throughout the process of making the cheesecake, but before I show you those I'll tell you this: that thing was a LOT of work.  Granted, the directions were very up front and I knew it would be a lot of work, but my goodness.  And at the end of the day, I think it just tasted like pumpkin pie, so I think next time I'll save myself the work and just make a regular 'ole pumpkin pie!

Here's the line-up of ingredients:

Eggs, brown sugar, pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, butter, ginger snaps, and flour

According to the directions, the prep time was 35 minutes.  This included:

Straining the pumpkin,

Crushing the ginger snap cookies,

Mixing the ginger snaps with butter, pressing into a crust, and baking the crust,

And mixing up all the other ingrediants.

Whew! After I got all of that done, it was time to pour the filling into the crust, put it in the oven for an hour to bake, and pray that everything would turn out alright.

I did all of the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen while I was waiting for it to bake.  After the 1 hour bake time, I had to turn the oven off but leave the cheesecake in the oven as it cooled for a half hour.

Total time elapsed so far: About 2 hours and 5 minutes.

After the half hour in-oven cooling period, I had to take it out of the oven and let it stand for 45 minutes.

It looked pretty darn good so far though.  Very encouraging.

After the 45 minutes of standing, I got to break the cheesecake free from the spring form pan and set it on my fancy cake stand.  But we weren't done yet.  Next it needed to chill for at least 4 hours.

THEN it would be done.

I was doing this in the evening, so i just slid the cheesecake onto my cake stand, covered it with the glass cover, and stuck it in the garage for the night since it's quite chilly in there.

Total time it took to prepare the pumpkin cheesecake: About 7 hours.  Good grief.

But see how good it looked!

Anything that takes 7 hours to prepare better look and taste ridiculously delicious.

As I mentioned, it really just ended up tasting like regular pumpkin pie if you ask me, so it didn't really seem to be worth the 7 hour prep time, but it was very good.  I love cheesecake, so I would definitely be willing to endure the lengthy prep time for a regular cheesecake, but for something that just ended up tasting like pumpkin pie, I don't know if I'd do it again.  

If anyone's interesting in braving the 7 hour prep time for this dessert, let me know and I'll get you the recipe!

Giving Thanks: 2010 Edition

There are millions of things that I am thankful for, but here are just a few:

A healthy, happy, easy pregnancy thus far- for both me and baby.  This includes: absolutely zero morning sickness, hearing our Peanut's heartbeat at each doctor's appointment, and still (sort of) fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothes.

An unbelievably wonderful and supportive husband.  Hubby G is so fantastic I can't even begin to convey it in words.  He spoils me like crazy and is fantastically supportive of everything I do, attempt, and am passionate about.  Plus, he melts my heart on a daily basis- the other night he woke up and got out of bed in the wee hours of the morning just to go comfort our dog Colby, who was having a nightmare.  How cute is that!?

And speaking of Colby, I'm very thankful for our mischievous little pup!  He may get himself into trouble from time to time, but we absolutely cannot imagine our lives without him.  During our Thanksgiving vacation to the U.P. last year was when we met Colby, and we're equally thankful for the wonderful care that was given to him at the Copper Country Humane Society before we were lucky enough to meet him and adopt him.

I'm thankful for all of my fantastic family and friends.  They are always there for me with love, support, and something that will make me smile- what more could I ask for!?  I have wonderful parents and grandparents who I aspire to be like.  I'm thankful that my sister and I can be so different in so many ways but get along fantastically.  I have wonderful extended family all over Michigan and beyond who make our family what it is- which is nothing short of amazing.  I have a fantastic family of in-laws who is also incredibly supportive and such a great, different experience for me to be a part of a big family that includes Hubby G's 4 siblings.

Our beautiful house!  Hubby G and I are so fortunate to be homeowners in a safe, happy neighborhood.  I love that we're within 20 minutes of the heart of the 2nd largest city in our state, yet we're on the outskirts of the suburbs and we're also able to go on Fall farm adventures and a Christmas tree farm less than 5 miles from our house.

And although there are thousands of things that come before this on my list of things to be thankful for, I'll keep it real here for a second and say that I'm totally thankful for my iPad.  I use that thing on a daily basis and: 1) I won it so it was FREE. 2) I won it from ArtPrize which I'm equally thankful for because it is AMAZING.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!!

Our Little Peanut: 18 Weeks

Today Hubby G and I went to our 18 week OB appointment.  We have an appointment every 4 weeks, but it seems like the time in between each of those appointments stretches on for an eternity!  I was really excited to go to this appointment so that I could hear our little Peanut's heartbeat again, but I'm always a little nervous for each appointment too.

I've been reading the message board for all the moms due in April 2011 on this popular baby site ever since I found out I was pregnant and yesterday I read a post from someone who had just lost their baby at 19 weeks gestation.  My heart goes out to that family and it just reminds me that even though we're "out of the woods" since we're well into the 2nd trimester now- nothing is ever certain.

But enough sad thoughts- we heard our Peanut's heartbeat today and everything sounded great!  It's fantastic to have that reassurance :)  Apparently our Peanut was feeling a little sassy today and while we were listening to the wonderful little heart beating away he or she kicked and moved around so that the doctor had to go looking for it again!  I haven't been able to feel any of the kicks or movements yet and I'm incredibly impatient for that!  Our doctor told us that I'll probably begin to feel movement around 20 weeks, so hopefully I won't have to wait much longer.  I just want to be able to feel him or her moving around so that I know everything is ok!

And we'll be finding out if our Peanut is a boy or a girl very soon!  We've had a number of family and friends weigh in with their guesses and now it's time to make your guess official!

I've added a little Boy/Girl poll here on the blog in the upper left corner on the home page so make sure you check it out and submit your guess!  


I'm interested to see the results!  You'll be able to make your guess up until 8:00 pm on Friday, December 10th.  Hubby G and I will be finding out well before then, but that's when we'll make the announcement here!

Belly Pic Preview

Hubby G and I have been diligently taking weekly belly photos and I have just recently gotten around to editing them!  I'm not quite ready to post all I've got yet, but I'm sharing the photo above as a little preview.

Work is slowing waaaaaaaay down for the holidays, so hopefully I'll be blogging here more!  For now though, I'm headed up to the kitchen to make homemade bread (with the help of the bread machine) and rice krispie treats since I finished off the last of the cake yesterday.  According to my scale at home I still have not gained ANY weight, though my belly is clearly beginning to "pop".  So, I'm taking that as a green light to keep baking to my little heart's desire.  But don't worry....I'm also trying to load up on fruits and veggies and all that other good stuff too.  My biggest struggle is with protein- I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm just not a big meat eater.

Yesterday I learned that I would have to eat 208 nuts from the jar of mixed nuts we have in order to fulfill one serving of protein.

Good grief.

I think I'll go contemplate my protein choices over a rice krispie treat.

The Willpower It Takes To Bake A Cake

[I apologize for my 2 week absence- I had two large work-related events the last two weekends in a row and as you can imagine, those things tied up my time quite thoroughly!]

My title for this post seems a bit counterintuitive- isn't is a lack of willpower that would result in cake baking/eating?  And that is where you would be quite wrong.

See, a couple of weeks ago I had a hankering for cake.  We had mix for cookies and we had mix for brownies but no- I wanted CAKE.  Specifically I had chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on the brain, but really just cake in general was what I really wanted.  Hubby G is not a fan of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, so while at the grocery store we compromised and purchased marble cake mix with chocolate frosting.  I was really excited to make my cake (and therefore, EAT my cake), but then we had a dozen donuts at our house and I couldn't really justify baking a cake when we already had that many donuts around the house.  So I patiently waited and ate the donuts first (Ha! If only we could always bide our time patiently eating donuts....)

A day or two after the donuts were gone I was ready to make my cake.  I was so excited!  I preheated the oven, got the pans ready, and began mixing the batter.  And then came the moment of extreme willpower.

No licking the beaters.

Or the spatula.

Or the bowl.

THE HORROR!!

The cake batter had egg in it.  Raw egg + pregnancy = higher risk of salmonella = no cake batter for this lady.

It literally pained me to rinse those beaters and spatula and bowl in the sink rather than lick the wonderful cake batter deliciousness off of them....that's part of that wonderfulness of baking a cake!!  It's a delicious prelude to the cake itself!

I was not happy about missing out on the prelude.

If Hubby G had been home at the time, I swear I would have made him rinse it instead of me because it was that painful.  What a waste!  AND no prelude means that it made me even more impatient to eat the cake.  I mean, a cake batter prelude is really quite necessary because not only do you have to wait for the cake to bake, but you also have to wait for it to cool before you can frost it.  IT'S TORTURE I TELL YOU!

But I did it.

And that is why is takes willpower to bake a cake.