Food Adventures: Pumpkin Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake

Hello, friends!

Guess what, guys! I made a cheesecake! :D

Mr. Kyle requested a cheesecake for his sweet this weekend. His one detail in the request was that it have pumpkin in it. So I went to the interwebs for a pumpkin cheesecake recipe. I found this one by Paula Deen (so you know it's good), but I decided that I didn't want to follow the recipe all that closely. I wanted to live dangerously. ;) And I wanted to get some chocolate in there, because pumpkin and chocolate are a beautiful couple.

I practically didn't follow this recipe at all... except for the the crust, which was a great crust recipe.

So here's my cheesecake recipe!

Pumpkin Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake

Ingredients

For Crust:

• 1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 stick melted salted butter

For Filling:

• 1 cup milk chocolate chips
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3 (8-ounce) packages of cream cheese or Neufchâtel cheese (1/3 less fat), room temperature
• 3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 cup sour cream (or light sour cream)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (15-ounce) can of pureed pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice\

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
2. Follow the "For crust" instructions from this recipe. 
3. Get two double boilers (or two small pans of water with glass bowls that fit over them to work as double boilers) ready to melt chocolate. 
4. Place 1 cup of milk chocolate chips in one double boiler to melt and place 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips to melt in the other double boiler. 
5. Melt the chocolate and let cool slightly, so it is not hot, but not to the point where it begins to harden. 
6. While the chocolate melts, beat cream cheese until smooth. 
7. Add eggs, egg yolk, sour cream, sugar, flour, and vanilla. 
8. Beat until well combined. 
9. Scoop two cups of cream cheese mixture out of the "mother" mixture and divide into two small bowls, one cup of cream cheese mixture into each bowl. 
10. Mix the melted and cooled milk chocolate chips into the cream cheese mixture in one of the two small bowls that contains one cup of cream cheese mixture, until well mixed. 
11. Repeat with the semi-sweet chocolate and remaining small bowl of cream cheese mixture. 
12. Beat 2/3 of the can of pumpkin puree and the pumpkin pie spice into the remaining cream cheese mixture (the mother mixture).
13. Pour half of the pumpkin cream cheese mixture into the prepared crust and spread evenly. 
14. Dollop the milk chocolate cream cheese mixture into the pumpkin mixture in the crust, making spots in the pumpkin mix like you would see on dice. Use a knife to swirl the chocolate mix around. 
15. Pour the remaining half of the pumpkin cream cheese mixture into the crust, spread evenly. 
16. Dollop the semi-sweet chocolate mixture into the pumpkin mixture just as was done with the milk chocolate mixture. Use a knife to swirl the chocolate mix around. 
17. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour. 
18. Remove from oven and let sit for 15 minutes. 
19. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. 

There you have it!!

I made mine with the lighter version of the ingredients, just to save some calories and fat. It was delicious! The pumpkin and chocolate are SO GOOD. I hope you enjoy it! I know we did!

Until next time, friends!
Stay excellent!

- Jenny -

Food Adventures with Alivia!

Hello, friends!

As you know by now, I oft am running around working and visiting my man and that means I don't get much time to hang with my friends. It's a little sad, really, but my friends are great; the bestest of the best and I always seem to work it out. :)

Alivia is one of the bestest of the best, for sure!

She came by one evening this past week to hang out, eat some pizza, make some cake batter truffles, and drink some Silly Cow Farms Hot Chocolate! It was a fantastic time, fun and funny and just a nice break from everything else in life. :)

I love Alivia. She's pretty much the greatest! Heehee!

I sprinkled the sprinkles while Alivia coated the truffles in almond bark. Teamwork, that's what that is.

This is her "spider face."

After we made the truffles, we found our favorite mugs (per the instructions ;) ) and made us some Silly Cow Farms Chocolate Truffle hot chocolate. Yummmmmmmmmmm. I was so excited to see this when Alivia brought it over. I had actually seen this hot chocolate on a blog somewhere down the line and thought it was the cutest and coolest thing. Now I'm excited to know it can be found here! Awesomeness all around!

The truffles were pretty good too! They were a lot like cookie dough without the eggs. The end result truffle is really good with its coating. I think all around it was a great success. :) Tasty tasty! Here, you will see an interesting phenomenon that we noticed. As the inside of the truffles warmed up from being chilled in the freezer, it expanded and poked through the weakest part of the coating. Silly!

(Alivia, I did that thinking about it much too hard thing and asked Kyle what caused it to happen and he was like "duh" and told me. And I was like, "....duh." Haha!)

I hope that wherever you are and however busy you are, you get chances to hang out with friends. :) I cherish every moment I get. And Anna, Alivia and I look forward to the next time we can all hang out SO much. We need to do a bean dip and movie sleepover for sure. 

Friends of 2FT, this slumber event is somewhat of an old tradition. Do you have awesome traditions with friends? What do you do?! We'd love to hear from you, so drop a line! 

Until next time, stay excellent! 

- Jenny -