Pumpkin Paradise: Something New for the Season

Dear Suzy,

I love pumpkin flavored things, so of course this is my favorite season! Still, I find that after more years than I'll own of eating all the traditional fall desserts, I am sick of classic pumpkin pie! I know it's a terrible thing for a pumpkin lover such as myself to say, but I just think it could be... jazzed up a bit, don't you? I'd ask for a pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but cheesecake is so very heavy! What can I make this year to spice things up?

Pumpkin'd Out,

Mrs. Spratt

Dear Mrs. Spratt,

I have the perfect recipe for you! It's called "Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie" and it's one of my original recipes. 

This pie can be and has been multiplied to serve large groups.

This is a hotel pan serving about 40.

It has everything you love about pumpkin cheesecake without being quite so heavy. It does include both weight measurements and volume measurements, so a scale is useful. If you don't have a scale, there are some excellent weight-to-volume converters on google to help you convert it easily. I really like this one. I hope you enjoy! I encourage all of my readers who try this recipe to post photos of their results in the comments- I love to see them!

Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie

        Yield: 2 pies

Filling:

1#2oz cream cheese, SOFT 17oz sugar .5oz corn starch 10oz sour cream 3 chai tea bags put through a strainer to get the big pieces out 15oz Pumpkin puree 5 eggs 1.5 tsp vanilla 1 can evaporated milk

Crust: 8 Graham crackers .5 box club crackers 2 sticks butter 4 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
- First combine sugar and corn starch in a sifter/strainer, sift into a mixer bowl and mix well - Add soft cream cheese and mix at medium power. - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again (seriously all 3 times, it's super important- trust me!) - Scrape bowl well and add sour cream - Mix @ half power - Scrape bowl well
- Add chai spices and pumpkin puree and mix - Scrape bowl completely and mix again - Add eggs one at a time while mixing - Add evaporated milk and vanilla while mixing - Pulverize the crackers into crumbs - Melt butter - Pour sugar and butter into crumbs and mix well - Smooth crust mix into two pie pans - Par bake crusts for 5 minutes at 325 - Pour filling into crusts - Place pans into a cookie sheet and place the cookie sheet into the oven (preheated at 325) - Pour hot water from a pitcher or liquid measuring cup into cookie sheet so that shallow water covers the whole surface without splashing into the pies - Bake pies until just barely jiggley in the center - Pull out pies, leave cookie sheet - When oven is cooled, remove pan of water - Cool pies for about an hour, chill overnight.

You may be wondering why on earth you need to scrape the bowl so many times. Simply, the biggest difference between a perfect cream cheese dessert (particularly cheesecake) and an... amateur one... is that a perfect cream cheese dessert has no spots, specks, chunks or blobs of white when you cut into it. The more you scrape and re-mix, the more likely you are to have it come out perfect. Especially with a pumpkin pie with orange filling, those white specks of cream cheese are nobody's friend.