Pumpkin Cheesecake - I've seen the light-ness

Growing up I loved pumpkin pie, I loved the way my Great Grandmother made it so velvety like a custard with the right balance of nutmeg and ginger, no cloves no nothing to over power the pumpkin flavor.   It was always perfect.   But the addition of cream cheese was nothing short of brilliant (kudos to the first pumpkin cheesecake inventor, whoever she may be).   Light, fluffy and pumkiny.   Great Grandma never strayed from her original pumpkin pie recipe (complete with the award winning lard crust) – she was a bit of a traditionalist when it came to the holidays.   And with our kitchen competition yesterday, Mom made a pumpkin pie (not Great Grannies recipe, but swears now she is going back to it after mammoth cracks appeared on the surface – there were a few on the cover picture too).  

So this is what went down. Kitchen Competition #2 featuring traditional pumpkin pie versus pumpkin caramel cheesecake.

Mom used a recipe from the cover of Fine Living, since it claimed to be the perfect pumpkin pie and I chose to mix it up a bit and make a pumpkin cheese cake, but wanted the added caramel flavor (at first I thought of brûlée but decided against it.   I didn’t want to light my sour cream topping on fire with the burned sugar – although might give it a go next time) 

  The in-house experts went with the Pumpkin Cheesecake with Caramel Sauce.   I combined my favorite cheesecake recipe (Three Cities of Spain Classic) with my Granny’s pumpkin pie recipe from her original homemade recipe book

Great Grandma Giles original recipe book

Typed by a Royal manual typewriter in the 50's pre selectric, pre word processor, pre the age of screaming down the information highway days 

The cheesecake was delicious according to Sophie who in the past “couldn’t stand the stuff, pumpkins…not cheesecake”  Please click over to the Kitchen Competition page and try it and let me know what you think.