Making some Special Tiny Pumpkin Cheesecakes!

We recently had a special Thanksgiving/harvest celebration at church including a meal at church.

A year ago for last year’s Thanksgiving/Harvest celebration here in Poland which we had in October, I had made some small individual cheeseckes from my tiny individual pumpkins!

Some people in the church requested these little pumpkins again this year so I agreed that I would do them again!

They do take a lot of time, however.

Last year I had scoured the internet for dessert ideas for these little pumpkins. I had seen one where they had put custard in them. It was a good idea, but I don’t particularly like custard. I thought, “Hmm, if you can make custard in the middle of these little pumpkins, I can put other things in them. Let me try cheesecake.”

So I did that.

I used the cheesecake recipe from a sort of famous Blueberry Cheesecake Dessert - and it is a very basic recipe - and made these cute pumpkins.

Let me show you how.

First I cut open the tops and using a spoon, cleaned out all the seeds. I then placed them upside down on a couple of pans and cooked them for an hour. They seem to need a lot of cooking as there isn’t a lot of moisture in these pumpkins.

While the pumpkins were cooking, I made up the cheesecake mixture.

After cooking for one hour, I flipped them back over (so I could fill them) and started putting things inside. I let them cool for 5 min or so - probably not purposely but just because of my inefficiency!

I put a spoonful of graham cracker/vanilla crumbs on the bottom.

I then poured the cheesecake filling into it (well, I spooned it in, actually).

I cooked that at about 350F until it the filling was not runny anymore - I started checking at 20 min.

In the meantime, I had cut up apples and cooked them with some sugar in a pot on the stovetop and made an apple mixture (with cinnamon). Well, I actually made it the day before and it was already in the fridge. I knew I would have enough to do this day.

Once the cheesecakes were cooked and then cooled for an hour or so, I put the apple topping on and put it all in the fridge overnight.

The next morning I took them out of the fridge and whipped up some 30 or 36% whipping cream with vanilla and a bit of sugar and put it on top of the apple mixture. Then I put the top back on the individual little pumpkin.

I tried to keep the little tops with the pumpkins I cut it from so that they looked nice together.

Here is my finished tiny pumpkin cheesecake! It is all edible except the outer rind of the pumpkin!

So there you are! If you want to make something completely unexpected, try some of these for your next dinner get-together! People said they were delicious!!! I made 25 and didn’t bring any home with me after our church dinner on Sunday.

Enjoy!

Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen3 Comments