Taste Odyssey #9 - Thanksgiving Edition

This entry is woefully late if you're in Canada and woefully early if you're in America, so frankly I feel it is timed as perfectly as is possible.  The two events don't have a great deal of similarity beyond the name; we have far less smallpox involved in ours and only during Yanksgiving do you run the risk of being trampled to death the day afterward.

However, both revolve around turkeys and pumpkins, and while I'm not sure what I'd do with the former, the latter certainly presents us with some unique ideas...

Recipe #1 - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/grandmas-gingersnaps/detail.aspx

But first some ginger snaps!  This is going somewhere, don't worry.  Ginger snaps are a breeze to make, taste delicious, and are always handy to have to snack on.  My only suggestion with this particular recipe is to make sure you mix the ginger well.  I didn't do as good a job as I'd hoped and some cookies ended up way more ginger-y than others.  This is where the hand mixer would have been a huge help.

No, the  dough picture doesn't sell the cookies at all, but once they're cooked?  Oh yes.

I wouldn't eat too many though, as I nearly learned to my great dismay after I switched over to the second recipe...

Recipe #2 - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/marbled-pumpkin-cheesecake/detail.aspx

Yeah, it's a pumpkin cheesecake, just in time for next year's holidays!  With a ginger snap crust!

I nearly made my first big mistake by grossly underestimating how many gingersnaps would have to be crumbled to make 1.5 cups.  I went with what I assumed to be three times as many as I needed, just in case, and it turned out to be exactly enough.  So don't go spreading them around until you make sure you have enough for the crust.

My only other issue with the crust is that it was very hard to spread into the springform pan.  The bottom was obviously fairly simple, but getting it an inch up the sides was rather tough.  I think with more gingersnap it would have been easier, but the melted butter made it difficult.  It came out okay in the end but I think more care with the sides would have helped.

The rest of the recipe is pretty simple, with one major caveat.  I highly recommend doubling the amount of nutmeg and cinnamon used.  I noticed a couple of people suggested that this would help the taste of the pumpkin and I have to agree that it was just right with twice as much as suggested.

Beyond my first encounter with a springform pan, the act of marbling a cheesecake (or even making a cheesecake, but that turned out to be reasonably easy) was the big neat trick I learned.  I followed the instructions in the recipe exactly and I think it turned out pretty good.  It certainly tasted like it.