Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake for Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Several blog challenges this month have had pumpkin as their theme, but We Should Cocoa asked, of course, for recipes including both pumpkin and chocolate. I am going to friends' for dinner tonight and offered to bring dessert, so I decided that some sort of chocolate and pumpkin cake or pudding would be perfect. I love cheesecake, and thought these flavours would work well together, so simply hunted around on the internet until I found some recipes to inspire me.

The ones that particularly stood out were this Hershey's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cheesecake and this Chocolate Swirled Pumpkin Cheesecake from Moms Who Think. I ended up adapting the recipes and throwing in a few tweaks of my own; does that entitle me to call this an original Caroline Makes recipe?

Hershey's Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake

1 cup Graham Cracker or other biscuit crumbs (eg digestive)

1/2 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder (you can actually buy this from Asda in the UK)

1/2 cup melted butter

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 handfuls of Hershey's Kisses (exact number doesn't matter but I used about half a standard-sized packet)

600g cream cheese

1 cup granulated sugar

1 can (425g) solid packed pumpkin - I bought this from Amazon but have been told Waitrose sell it, and of course it's quite easy to get hold of in the US

4 eggs

1/2 cup condensed milk

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

(you could also replace these last two with pumpkin pie spice)

Preheat oven to 180C/ 160 C fan. Grease a 9-inch springform cake tin.

Mix the Graham Cracker or biscuit crumbs with the cocoa powder and sugar. Melt the butter in the microwave and mix in to the biscuits to make thick crumbs.

Press onto the bottom of the tin. As you can see, this is a case of "do as I say, not as I do".... I forgot to add the cocoa powder. But it would definitely work in this recipe and give a lovely chocolate base.

Take one bag of Hershey's Kisses and try not to eat too many as you unwrap...

Dot the Hershey's Kisses all over the cheesecake base.

Beat the cheese and sugar until smooth

 

Take one can of pumpkin - I bought this from Amazon. Beat in to the mixture.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Then beat in the flour and whatever spices you are using.

Carefully pour the mixture into the tin around the Hershey's kisses so as not to dislodge them from their position, then pour the rest of the mixture over the top, retaining about 1 cup of the pumpkin and cheese mixture in your mixing bowl.

Melt a handful of Hershey's Kisses in the microwave and mix in to the remaining pumpkin mixture, which will turn chocolate in colour. Carefully pour this on top of your cheesecake and use a spoon to swirl; you'll get a pattern like this below.

Bake in the oven for an hour then leave to cool. A crack did appear in the surface of mine but you could hide this with whipped cream; it is worth keeping an eye on the cheesecake while it is cooking though.

I love the pattern on the top!

Unfortunately I can't show any more pictures or even comment on what it tastes like at this stage as I am taking it to my friends' for dinner tonight, but needed to write the blog post now in order to enter various blogging challenges before the deadline! Rest assured that I will come back to this post and tell you what this actually tastes like!

Update: Well, we had the cheesecake after dinner tonight and I was a little unsure if I would like the taste, and hadn't even taken it out of the tin at this stage! But I needn't have worried:

It sliced really well and while the Hershey's Kisses didn't hold their shape, you can see where the chocolate is inside:

It tasted absolutely delicious, really light and creamy and the pumpkin taste wasn't overpowering at all. I think this is one of the nicest cheesecakes I've made, and even my boyfriend - who looked quite worried when I mentioned the pumpkin - really liked it!

I have already missed the deadline for We Should Cocoa, the brainchild of Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Tea Pot, which is the challenge I actually wanted to make this for in the first place, but Nat from Hungry Hinny, who is this month's guest host, has said she will still add this to the roundup - thanks Nat!

I am also sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel from Dolly Bakes and Laura from Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme this month is Halloween, and this would be the perfect dessert to come back to after an evening of trick or treating.

Pumpkins are most definitely in season so I am sending this to Simple And In Season, an event created by Ren of Fabulicious Food and this month hosted by Franglais Kitchen.

Franglais Kitchen is also the host of this month's One Ingredient Challenge, created by How To Cook Good Food, where the ingredient is - helpfully - also pumpkin!
 

Halloween Fiesta, hosted by Cooks Joy, is welcoming recipes using pumpkin or squash this month so I am entering this recipe.

Cooks Joy is also hosting a Diwali Bash where the theme is also pumpkin:

I am also sending this to United Bakes of America hosted by Cupcake Crazy Gem.

I am updating this to send it to Cooking Around the World, as their theme this month (for which they accept old posts) is American food.

 

Meal Planning - Week 15

My boyfriend's mum is away for a few days so I'm going to go and stay at his house from Monday to Wednesday this week. I'm really looking forward to spending three days in a row with him and even the little things like cooking him dinner and making him a packed lunch for work - and it will be a good test run before we move in together!

On a separate note, I'm wondering if there's any point continuing to publish my meal plans on my blog, and whether to also log what I actually ate. I find it really useful in terms of trying to lose weight (or acknowledging why I didn't lose weight this week!) but it's not something that anyone else would be particularly interested in. And is it weird for people who stumble across this on the internet to know such random details of my life? I will think about this for another week or two but if you have an opinion (try not to be offensive please) then feel free to share in the comments box.

Monday
Breakfast Still at my house at this point - cereal
Lunch Cooked chicken and couscous
Dinner  At my boyfriend's from now on. As I don't want to have to faff around getting ingredients and worrying about what's in his house and what's in mine, I'm going to suggest pizza tonight, so he can have whichever type he wants and I can get a lower-calorie Weight Watchers branded pizza.


Tuesday
Breakfast Still at my boyfriend's. Will probably have to leave earlier than normal (he likes to get a very early train!) so will take some cereal with me to work
Lunch Cooked chicken and couscous
Dinner Ever since I had a macaroni cheeseburger in the Cheesecake Factory in Las Vegas, I've wanted to recreate it at home! My boyfriend always has burgers, bread rolls and chips in his house, none of which I ever buy, so I'll take advantage of that and try out the mac and cheese burger (though my boyfriend will probably want a plain one!)


Wednesday
Breakfast Still at my boyfriend's - cereal for breakfast
Lunch Baked potato, assuming I remember to take something with me to work!
Dinner Halloween today and we're going to my boyfriend's cousin's for dinner with her and her fiance. I don't know what they are planning to cook but I am providing dessert :-) I guess I'll go back to my house afterwards as his mum is back this evening and I will have neglected my poor cat for the past three days (though don't worry, my neighbour will feed her!).

Thursday
Breakfast Back at my house - will cook quorn sausages
Lunch Sandwich
Dinner Beef curry using leftover beef from last weekend's brisket in coca-cola (though I will have frozen the leftovers as they wouldn't keep this long otherwise)

Friday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Leftover beef curry from yesterday
Dinner Haven't thought this far ahead yet... not sure if I will invite my boyfriend over or stay home alone, after being at his house for most of the week I probably will need a couple of nights to do things around the house. If I'm home alone I will see what I've got that needs using up.


Saturday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch  Small Weightwatchers pizza oval with salad
Dinner Bonfire night - planning to go to the local fireworks if it isn't raining. We need to be there before 7 so it might be a bit of a rush to eat beforehand so I think I'm going to suggest we go to the chip shop and buy some food to eat while we watch the fireworks. And I'm planning to make cupcakes today so that will be a lot of syns!

Sunday
Breakfast/Lunch With my boyfriend - not sure if we will be at his house or mine. I could do the chicken ciabattas I was going to make last weekend but didn't.
Dinner Chargrilled tuna with warm coriander and caper vinaigrette from Delia's How to Cook Book 2 (that I recently picked up at a second hand sale) p59

Stuffed Baked Squash

My mum recently gave me half a baby pumpkin she had bought - at least I think it was a baby pumpkin rather than some other kind of squash, but either way it seemed quite appropriate for this time of year.

I found a recipe in Weight Watchers Simply Autumn for a stuffed baby squash which I decided to adapt to suit the ingredients I liked and had in the house.

I began by scooping out the seeds inside the pumpkin and roasting it in the oven.

I prepared some cous cous

Mixed the cous cous with onion, red pepper and cottage cheese

Spoon the filling into the pumpkin and bake again for another 20 minutes. Enjoy!

The Weight Watchers recipe has 3 points but mine might be different as I adapted it; I believe it would be free on Slimming World as long as you use the low-fat cottage cheese, depending on which plan you are following.

I am sending this to Weekend Herb Blogging, created by Cook Almost Anything, and this week hosted by La Cucina di Cristina, as they accept recipes using any herb or vegetable.

Halloween Fiesta, hosted by Cooks Joy, is welcoming recipes using pumpkin or squash this month so I am entering this recipe.

Cooks Joy is also hosting a Diwali Bash where the theme is also pumpkin:

Pumpkins are most definitely in season so I am sending this to Simple And In Season, an event created by Ren of Fabulicious Food and this month hosted by Franglais Kitchen.

Franglais Kitchen is also the host of this month's One Ingredient Challenge, created by How To Cook Good Food, where the ingredient is - helpfully - also pumpkin!

I am also sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel from Dolly Bakes and Laura from Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme this month is Halloween. You could serve this stuffed pumpkin for dinner on Halloween or any time around that period.

Navajo Fry Bread

When I was in America recently, I was lucky enough to stay at the View hotel in Monument Valley, which is operated by Navajo Native Americans and overlooks the amazing Monument Valley itself. In fact I can't resist sharing a few pictures....

 The View Hotel, built into the side of the rock

Me pretending to be John Wayne... or Johnny Depp if you've seen the stills from the new Lone Ranger film, he's standing in this exact spot!

Sunrise over Monument Valley - my boyfriend took this photo.

In the hotel restaurant I ate some Navajo Fry Bread. It's a flat bread deep fried, usually in shortening (lard), and eaten either sweet (with honey and icing sugar) or savoury (eg with a sandwich filling, or heaped with chilli). According to Wikipedia, frybread was created using ingredients given by the US government when the Navajo Native Americans were relocated to New Mexico from Arizona in 1864 (the Long Walk).

The fry bread I ate was made using blue corn which gave it an unusual bluish-grey colour, though it is also made with red corn which gives a more conventional golden colour when cooked. I ate it as a sandwich with a turkey filling at lunchtime, then when we returned to the same restaurant for dinner, my boyfriend ordered it as a starter and ate it plain. It was also on the dessert menu with honey so catering for all tastes!

The next day as we were leaving Monument Valley and passing through Arizona, we stopped off for lunch at a trading post, and in the shop I found a packet of fry bread mix. As my boyfriend likes it so much I thought it would be fun to bring one home and have a go at making it!

This is a very simple to use packet mix (and therefore one that might horrify purists who like to make everything themselves... but where else was I going to get the red corn flour?). All it contained was flour, yeast, and I think it also said shortening which confused me as I wasn't sure if that was referring to the shortening I cooked it in. I should have noted down what the packet actually said more carefully!

Simply mix the packet contents with water...

... and mix to form a ball of dough. Leave it to rest for 30-40 minutes.

Knead well then roll out. Separate into small pieces - I wasn't sure how big to make them as I found the dough quite sticky and therefore difficult to roll out as thin as it might have been. So I have some misshapen portions of different sizes here, though I figured that wouldn't matter too much.

Heat a couple of inches of oil in a pan. The instructions said to use shortening but I've never used that for deep-frying and thought oil would work much better. Gently slide each piece into the pan.

They only take a couple of minutes to cook on each side, then they are ready! Drain on paper towels once they are cooked.

They turn a lovely golden brown colour when cooked. The bread sort of puffs up and looks a little like a naan bread, but has a very different taste.

We ate the fry bread for breakfast with crispy bacon and I added a little honey to mine as well, which was lovely.

I am sending my Navajo Fry Bread to Ros aka The More Than Occasional Baker who is my co-host for Alphabakes, as the letter she has chosen this month is N. Hopefully she won't mind that I used a packet mix and didn't make this from scratch but I do think this should be one of the more unusual entries we get this month!

I am updating this post to send it to Cooking Around the World, as their theme this month (for which they accept old posts) is American food.