One word - omigod. These, along with all your other recipes, sound wonderful. These will come in handy for bribing the computer techs at the school where I work in the fall. I'm saving them!

Ooh - looks really good, thanks! Cindy

Sounds yummy! Mom's in charge of the Pumpkin Cheesecake though! I may save to make later and use butternut squash and my hommade pumpkin butter. Deanna

I have had both good and bad pumpkin cheesecake. It is BF's favorite, so he makes it every year. I have made it too. I use the Cooking Light recipe. But anyhoo, the best pumpkin cheesecake I ever had was at a friends house who is something of a gourmet. She got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated. The secret was draining/drying the canned pumpkin, which I have done. I did mine with paper towels. It somehow makes the pumpkin less bitter. Here's a copy of Chris Kimball's directions: Spiced Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake �" 'The Squeeze Job' Many people have turned to making pumpkin cheesecake instead of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. And while Kimball recommends using pumpkin from a can instead of roasting your own, he also warns against a common, and serious, flaw in the store-bought variety. "The problem is, it has a lot of moisture in it, and you don't want that extra moisture in your cheesecake," Kimball says, "because it ruins your cheesecake. So, what do you do?" "The secret," Kimball says, "is the way we wick away the moisture." His technique calls for putting a triple layer of paper towels onto a baking sheet �" one that has sides, to catch the eventual runoff. The pumpkin goes from the can right onto the towels, where it's smeared around. "This is a great thing for kids," Kimball says. "They can make a big mess." Then Kimball puts more towels on top, and folds the whole thing in half, then folds again. As he does, he's patting the bundle, squeezing water and moisture out. Then he flips it over, and carefully peels back the top layer of paper. "This looks like one of those fruit rollups, doesn't it?" Kimball says. Repeatedly flipping the bundle and peeling back the top layer of paper, Kimball eventually uncovers the pumpkin mash �" now much denser and ready to be combined with the cream cheese, which he recommends taking out of the refrigerator at least one to two hours ahead of time. In another tip, Kimball says to use spices like cinnamon and allspice sparingly. But his recipe also uses plenty of white sugar and heavy cream. "There's no stinting," Kimball says. "Stinting is not a verb that's used at Thanksgiving. Absolutely not." When all is ready, he reveals the next trick to the cheesecake: baking it in a springform pan that sits in a water bath, so the entire cheesecake cooks evenly.