Fall is here and where I live it is virtually impossible to avoid seeing pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere. Vendors selling big orange and even white carving pumpkins (which you NEVER eat) along the side of the road all over the Upstate of South Carolina to local farmer’s markets offering the baking pumpkins (like the one pictured to the left) are abundant. It’s funny how nostalgic something as simple as a pumpkin can be for people reminding them of Halloween and various childhood memories. But it’s the thought of a pumpkin pie that gets my senses reminiscing of Thanksgivings and Christmases from yesteryear (reminding me of my brother Kevin, too). I noticed this when I started making a low-carb Paleo dessert at the behest of my lovely bride Christine.
In the middle of the day, she comes into my office and said matter-of-factly, “I want a pumpkin cheesecake!” I told her I’ve never cooked with pumpkin before nor have I made a cheesecake with it. But, as adventurous as I like to be in the kitchen, I ran out and got all the ingredients I thought I needed and started working on it. My first test looking at this little baking pumpkin was how in the world to cut it up. This little sucker wasn’t easy to slice and dice and there had to be at least a million seeds in it (reminded me more of a squash than anything). But after making that pumpkin look like the victim in a slasher film and trying desperately over a half hour NOT to cut myself (next time I’m gonna roast it in the oven first to soften it up), I succeeded in getting all the edible parts of that pumpkin into a bowl. Now what? Here’s the recipe I came up with.
JIMMY MOORE’S LOW-CARB PALEO PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE
The Crust
4 ounces macadamia nuts
4 ounces cashews
4 ounces almonds
1 Tbs fresh local honey (or stevia for lower carb counts)
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3 large pastured eggs
4 Tbs butter, melted
Coconut oil (enough to grease your pan)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Take a paper towel and dip it in your coconut oil. Liberally grease the bottom of your 9X9 inch dish or pan (mine is a glass dish baking pan). Pulse blend the macadamias, cashews, and almonds 4 ounces at a time and dump into a mixing bowl when you create crumbs (keep in mind you can use all of one nut if you’d like). Repeat until all of the nuts are chopped up into your “flour” mix. Add honey (or you can substitute some stevia if you don’t want to add the carbs to your recipe), nutmeg, cinnamon and eggs to the macadamia nuts and whip vigorously with a fork until well-blended. Do a taste check of the batter to make sure it has the appropriate sweetness for you. You’ll taste a subtle nutmeg/cinnamon flavor to complement what we’ll be adding to the top of this crust. Empty batter into 9X13 glass baking dish and gently press down with a spoon until it is evenly distributed along the bottom of the pan. Place pan into preheated oven and bake for 8 minutes (you’ll start to smell it after five minutes of cooking). Allow crust to completely cool quickly in the freezer (about 10 minutes). NOTE: It will not necessarily be thoroughly cooked because you don’t want the crust to burn or become dry while baking the cheesecake.
The Pumpkin Cheesecake Filling
1 baking pumpkin, boiled
4 Tbs butter
2 Tbs fresh local honey
4 packets of stevia (or liquid stevia equivalent)
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 Tbs nutmeg
24 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
5 large pastured eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
Sea salt
Turn the oven down to 325 degrees. Flying by the seat of my pants since I’d never worked with pumpkin before, I threw the raw bits and pieces I had chopped up into a pot of water set on medium high with some sea salt. After about 8-10 minutes of boiling, I dumped the pumpkin into a colander to sift the excess water out. Taking a fork, I mashed down on the pumpkin pulp to get as much of the liquid drained as possible. Meanwhile, I turned the heat down to medium low on the stovetop and put the butter in the pot. Dump the fully-drained cooked pumpkin on top of that and begin stirring this mixture together. Add in the honey, stevia, cinnamon and nutmeg to blend ingredients thoroughly. Turn the burner off and continue stirring until well blended.
Take the pumpkin mixture and put it into a large mixing bowl. Add cream cheese and eggs. Using a hand mixer, begin whipping the cheesecake together starting on low to prevent too much splatter (and it will splatter!). This should become moderately thick but not spoonable thick. That’s how it’s supposed to look. Add the sour cream and sea salt, stir by hand with a spoon and pull your crust out of the freezer. Pour the cheesecake mixture on top of the crust spreading it evenly across the 9X13 pan. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Place in freezer for one hour before slicing into cheesecake. For best results, refrigerate overnight for the cheesecake to set completely.
After tasting this on-the-fly creation, Christine said this is the best thing I’ve ever made her! And I’ve made a lot of tasty dishes over the years. Try this recipe out for a bit of nostalgia while sticking to your low-carb Paleo lifestyle! I’ll be making it for some upcoming holiday gatherings. So good!
10-6-11 UPDATE: I tried this recipe again except I roasted two baking pumpkins in the oven on 350 degrees for an hour. I also added in some raw heavy cream and some pumpkin spice mix to the recipe. I noticed I got more of the pumpkin pulp in my cheesecake because it scooped out very easily after roasting it. And the natural water in the pumpkin probably should have been drained before mixing the cheesecake batter…it was kinda runny. But the cheesecake set perfectly overnight. Be sure to adjust your spices and sweetener up a bit if you add the second pumpkin. I had trouble trying to balance the spices out for this attempt.
