The Last Pumpkin

In this house, we believe in pumpkin. The only creamer in our refrigerator is pumpkin spice. But we tend to keep to the season when it comes to cooking pumpkin desserts. From Thanksgiving onward, my kitchen is sometimes a pumpkin cheesecake factory. I used to make them for every family occasion, and every party wanted multiple. I always had to have one left over for my husband to keep. Now that we’ve moved to Delaware, the factory has shut down.

There is no need for an assembly line of cheesecake. A single can of pumpkin made all three, so the question then became how to use the leftover pumpkin when a cheesecake was finished. I found the answer in a pumpkin cookie recipe that called for 1 cup of pumpkin puree: the exact remainder in the can.

The cheesecake itself comes from an allrecipes member. It has a layer of normal cheesecake and a layer of pumpkin baked into a graham cracker crust like a normal pumpkin pie would be. I have a lot of practice with these. Cooking them is largely uneventful now. They take about forty minutes in the oven, and they suggest you cool it before placing in the refrigerator after it cools so it can properly chill. That takes about three hours, but I generally leave them overnight.

The cookie recipe came up as the first item in a google search for pumpkin cookies. I knew I had a little bit left of the pumpkin puree, and I knew I wanted to use it. I had the traditionally required ingredients for a cookie in the pantry, so I just had to find a recipe that I could make without another trip to the store. It was a relief to find the proper recipe on the first click.

It was a very wet dough, more so that I ever made before then. It struck me as odd that the recipe called for no chill time, but thankfully it falls out of the tablespoon you use to measure out each cookie without much trouble.

This was also the first time I made my own icing. It was delicious.I don't know that I will ever buy a store bought, thin icing for cookies again. It came together much easier than expected and the finishes on the cookies was wonderful. They will absolutely become a regular part of my baking routine. They went away too fast.

You can get the recipe for the pumpkin cheesecake or the pumpkin cookies off the hypertext.

Goodbye, pumpkin season. You were good to us.