Pumpkin Cheesecake And Thanksgiving Feasts
When it comes to Thanksgiving, my side of the family are a heck of a lot of people, so Thanksgiving is a heck of a lot of holiday. In attendance are my parents and siblings (a party of eleven), our partners (four additional bodies thus far), the nieces and nephews (a total of five as of writing), and my Grandaddy. This is not yet counting my cousins (eight), my aunt and uncle (two), their grandparents (two more), their sundry spouses and rotating cast of significant others (somewhere between 4-6 depending on their romantic endeavors in a given year), and those cousins’ assorted children (seven, once the babies are born). And in addition to all of the forty-two actually-related relatives who can be relied on to show up to Thanksgiving dinner, we have at least one (but more often five or so) friends-and-relations who are brought into the fold for the day and thrown right in.
With the scales tipping roughly at fifty members, Thanksgiving has escalated to a category five Event. The preparations begin at least a day in advance (a week in advance if you’re our mother), and everyone pitches in. We cook in our own homes and in my parents’ double ovens and on their wide gas range. My older brother descends on the kitchen for a late-night pie-making session wherein he crafts exactly one cran-apple-mince pie. Someone makes a lemon meringue pie for Grandaddy; the meringue weeps. Another person makes an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, a French silk pie, maybe a pound cake. Pie crust is everywhere; we are made of pie, we are made of flour, we are made of spilled sugar, and last-minute grocery trips for forgotten ingredients.
One the day-of, teams are divided into those who are setting up tables and chairs, those who are cooking, those who are toting heavy china from the attic and washing and drying it and - most importantly - those who will do the washing-up after the meal (a thankless task). We all “argue” about how to cook the turkey(s) and I, turkey-ambivalent at the best of times, decide to wash my hands of it and let the bird be turned into jerky for all I care.
I am requisitioned to make gravy at the last minute - “Oh no! We forgot gravy!” - which I do from the pan drippings and a small bit of stock, and butter and flour browned until just right. There are two kinds of stuffing: a boring kind and another boring kind, which is allegedly less-boring but somehow still boring? We whip up pounds and pounds of Grandmama’s mashed potatoes, which are just ordinary mashed potatoes except we keep feeding each other spoonsful and asking, “Does this taste right?” knowing that they’ll never be as good as our memories of hers.
We strip collard greens from the stems and stew them down with bizarre pieces of smoked pork. A dear friend makes a Midwestern dish called “frog eye salad” that involves an unlikely list of ingredients like mandarin oranges, marshmallows, Cool-Whip, and a specific kind of miniscule pasta. The kids go nuts for it.
My sister-in-law forms soft, sweet dinner rolls - a hundred and fifty of them - by intuition, never once glancing at a recipe. Someone “stuffs celery” which means filling some stalks with cream cheese and some with peanut butter, and we arrange every tart, pickled thing we’ can get our hands on into something that goes by the mystifying name of a “relish tray” even though there’s no relish on it. Crimson cranberry sauce is ladled into the ceremonial cut-glass bowl that looks like the Hampton Coliseum, with whole vats more ready as back-up. Someone empties out a jar of canned cranberry sauce for those who like their food Space Age-y. An array of vegan dishes have begun to show up as the family diaspora reaches the West coast: kale and pomegranate salad, wild rice, lovely stuffed mushrooms. The cousin contingent brings yet another turkey, and green-bean casserole, and broccoli-cheddar casserole, and chocolate pudding pies. Someone else contributes the occasion’s solitary pecan pie. Butter dishes are placed; salt and pepper set; vinegar cruets scattered; boughs of pine and autumn leaves arranged; chaos managed; time checks called. Hand sanitizer required by all and sundry.
It is loud.
There are a lot of babies.
Have I even met that baby?
Have I even met that boyfriend?
Several of us have headaches.
Someone is always brewing another pot of coffee.
The turkey in the smoker is (finally) done.
The electric carving knife tunes up over the chatter like a tiny, incessant chainsaw.
Dinner is two hours later than we meant it to be.
But we are here, and assembled, and somehow fitting into the scattered tables and motley crew of chairs that have sprawled across the hardwood floor, and we love it here even though fifty people is a lot of people, even though you love those people. A pause for saying grace, and the buffet-style meal begins. It will be another full year before we work this hard for what we eat.
Years ago for one blazing bright year, I became a pastry chef. Because it was only one year (albeit an intense, transformative year), I always feel a little silly mentioning it. I have not worked as a pastry chef since. However, I learned so much at that job. I think it’s worth marking the places that took us from one skillset to another: from a home-cook to a professional; from a trainee to the one in charge, even if that period of time was only once through a calendar year. When I eventually left that workplace, I took with me dozens of formulas and recipes and techniques. Since then, I’ve scaled some of those to home-proportions and put them into rotation in my personal kitchen.
By far one of my favorite transposed recipes is my pumpkin cheesecake. At the restaurant, we adapted a honey cheesecake recipe to fit the dropping temperatures and coziness of autumn. Biscoff cookie crumbs formed the crumb crust, onto which we settled a thick layer of perfect, gently-spiced pumpkin cheesecake. This was then topped with a puff of smoked whipped cream, a whole wheat tuile, a web of dark green pumpkin seed oil, and scattered pepitas. It was perfect. We in the kitchens rejoiced when cosmetic damage “ruined” a slice, or when I trimmed the edges from a fresh quarter-sheet tray to tidy things up: pumpkin cheesecake scraps were such a favorite. When I left the restaurant, I scaled this recipe back and added it to our Thanksgiving dinner rotation. I thought it was time that I shared it with you, too. It is like pumpkin pie, if pumpkin pie tasted the way you wish it did.
Might I dispel a myth? Some people have gotten the idea that making a good cheesecake is difficult - it is not. There are multiple places where you could go awry, but at the end of it all the most technically-failed cheesecake is less of a failure than a bad sponge cake or even a poorly-made batch of cookies. If the lid of your cheesecake cracks, who really cares? Cover it with a cloak of salty maple whipped cream and grate a bit of nutmeg overtop. As my chef used to say, “The major ingredient of cheesecake is cream cheese: something that will be solid and sliceable when chilled, no matter what you try to do to it.”
…at the end of it all the most technically-failed cheesecake is less of a failure than a bad sponge cake or even a poorly-made batch of cookies.
The less air that you incorporate into the batter, the better. For this reason, I recommend doing any strong beating you need to do during the first step, and then beating only as much as is necessary during the addition of the eggs. (Eggs do whip up so.) When the filling is composed, we’ll bake the cheesecake in a springform pan. Occasionally I’ve wrapped the bottom of the pan in multiple layers of tin foil and settled it into a water bath but you know what? That’s fussy. And we aren’t doing fussy cheesecake this time of year. The entire point of a cheesecake with a topping is that it doesn’t matter if it does crack because no one will ever know.
The cheesecake is done baking when you see a gentle wobble left to the center, after about an hour of baking. We remove the cheesecake and allow it to cool on a wire rick, then cover it and set it gently in the fridge until it is thoroughly chilled. Only when the cheesecake is chilled is the collar removed, and the cheesecake divvied up and served. You can freeze the entire thing, or freeze it in slices to remove piece by piece. Of course it doesn’t need to be Thanksgiving time to make pumpkin cheesecake. But this cheesecake has become a staple on my family’s sideboard, holding court amongst the great many pies. I love this about the holidays: there are so many things you only have that time of year. Pumpkin cheesecake has joined the long list of foods that are, by rights, only consumable in the month of November.
Holiday foods are also special because they can bring some of that familiarity forward into new places you might find yourself. After several years of splitting holidays between both our local families, Andrew and I have optioned to begin alternating Thanksgiving. This year we are going to be joining the Lauto side for the holiday! We are looking forward to being able to focus in a more wholehearted way on celebrating with one family at a time. I am also looking forward to experiencing their Thanksgiving traditions. (It will be my first time ever with a Thanksgiving that is smaller…more Leave It To Beaver, less Charlie Brown’s entire neighborhood.) And while I will certainly not be bringing along one of every single dish that shows face at a Heffington holiday, I am excited to share a food or two with Andrew’s side of our family, and experience their food traditions in return. Maybe a cheesecake will ride along (but probably not). Maybe I’ll make something new. Maybe I’ll meet the one stuffing that will convince me stuffing/dressing is not a soggy joke dressed in a beige cardigan. But the best thing about holiday traditions? It’s never too late to invent a new one together.
Pumpkin Cheesecake
for the Biscoff crust:
1 sleeve Biscoff lotus biscuits, pulverized till sandy
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, melted
for the cheesecake batter:
904 g. full-fat cream cheese (four 8-oz. packages), softened
235 g. sugar
20 g. vanilla extract
135 g. sour cream
235 g. pumpkin puree
3 eggs, room temperature
3 g. ground cinnamon
2 g. ground nutmeg
1 g. ground mace (can also sub for additional nutmeg)
for the salty maple whipped cream:
1 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons maple syrup
One pinch sea salt
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Bring out a 9” springform pan and set aside. In a small bowl combine Biscoff crumbs, sugar, and melted butter till sandy. Press firmly into the bottom of the springform pan with the base of a measuring cup or other firm surface. Really pack it in, as the sturdier the crust, the better it will come out of the pan. Set aside.
In a large stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together cream cheese and sugar till very smooth, making sure to scrape to the very bottom of the mixing bowl several times. This will be your best chance to beat out any lumps so give it as long as it needs.
When the mixture is smooth, add to this the vanilla extract, sour cream, and pumpkin puree, and spices. Mix gently on low speed till incorporated.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing well (but gently) after each addition. Remove bowl from stand mixer and finish mixing any residual batter by hand, scraping to the bottom of the bowl and incorporating anything that is not well-mixed. Pour onto crumb crust and smooth top with an off-set spatula. Give the pan a couple swift bangs on the counter top to settle any air bubbles.
Place in the oven and allow to bake for 50-60 minutes, checking to see if if the center looks risen, but slightly wobbly. When finished, remove from the oven. Don’t worry if there is a bit of splitting.
Set on a wire rack to cool, and run a knife around the edges of the pan to allow the cheesecake to contract and release from the sides as it cools. Many of the small cracks will disappear as the cheesecake settles. Allow to reach room temperature, then cover and place in the fridge to chill at least four hours, or overnight.
When ready to serve, put whipping cream in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (can also be done by hand but save your arm strength). Add maple syrup. Whip to stiff peaks. Gently fold in pinch of sea salt, being sure to thoroughly mix. Release the cheesecake from its pan, and spread the whipped cream across the whole surface, or dollop on individual slices. Grate a bit of nutmeg over the top for some razzle-dazzle. Serve and enjoy!
🥹💜