Smoked Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

 

 When people start raving about pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that, what they're actually excited about is the spice, not the pumpkin.  The same spice blend works as well in an apple pie as it does in a pumpkin pie.  You know what's even better than pumpkin pie?  Pumpkin cheesecake.

For my crust I'll be using a stick of melted butter, 12 oz of Ginger Snap cookies, 3T of brown sugar, and 1t of pumpkin pie spice.  For the cheesecake, I'll be using 4 bricks of cream cheese, three eggs, a can of pumpkin, 1/3c heavy cream (I forgot to put that in the picture) 1T pumpkin pie spice and 1t vanilla extract.

I like to get my dry ingredients going first, and then pour in the melted butter.  I want a texture like wet sand.

I want to press the crust mixture tightly into the springform pan, getting some of it up the sides.  It needs to bake at 350* for at least 8 minutes.  I checked it at 8, and gave it 3 more minutes.  This lets the sugar and butter and cookie bind into a crust.

 

 

 

 

Four bricks of cream cheese. Adding 1/4 cup brown sugar…

 

 …1 cup white sugar…

 

 Let that blend for a couple of minutes while I pull the crust out of the oven to cool.

Back to the batter! I'm adding a whole can of pumpkin puree!

Once that's mixed in, I'm adding my three eggs..

...my 1/3 cup heavy cream...

...1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract...

...1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice...

 

Smooth as silk! Batter up!!

I kinda spun the pan and tapped the sides to get any bubbles to come to the surface.

This is going on the smoker at 250*F.  I'll check it after an hour and 45 minutes.

...after a little over two hours, it had the firmness I wanted, measured by jiggling the pan.

Plated and ated.

Total prep time on this was less than thirty minutes.  I used the smoker because doing a water bath seemed daunting and I wasn't willing to put in the effort of learning how to do one.  I've made cheesecake on the smoker before, so I knew what to expect and I knew that it was a gentle enough heat to keep the top from cracking.

 

 

 

Makin' Bacon

 Have you ever bought the "thick cut" bacon at the store, and thought that the people doing the cutting of the bacon should really consult you on what an appropriate thickness is?  I sure have.  I want something that I can put my teeth into and know that it's got some meat to it!  Bearing in mind that my goal here is to have amazing results with minimal effort, I started searching around online, and I found this video.  I followed the directions exactly, and I got delicious results!

I got a nice piece of uncured pork belly from Costco just down the street.

I have kosher salt, brown sugar, and curing salt.

I cut the pork in two pieces to make it easier to handle.  Since the curing rub is a ratio of the meat weight, I weight both pieces separately.  Yeah, the weight is on the label on the bag.  I got toys that need to be gotten out, like the food scale.  I weighed in grams for a more exact measurement.

For salt and sugar, I want 2% of the total weight.  If it's been a minute since you took math, I took the total and multiplied by .02.  I need just over 76 grams of salt and 76 grams of brown sugar.

I measured kosher salt, hit the tare button to re-zero the scale, and then the brown sugar.

 

For the curing salt, I need .25% of the total weight.

That's the total weight multiplied by .0025.

Turns out I needed a larger bowl to mix this stuff.  Next time 'round, I'll measure the cure for each piece separately.

Coat each piece top and bottom with the cure mixture, and then pack 'em up.  The video suggested two-gallon ziploc bags.  I used the vacuum sealer because I was worried about leakage.  Into the fridge they go for seven days.

...Seven days later...

Look at the difference in color!

Unpacked and rinsed completely, to get the excess cure mix off the meat, and patted dry.

I added pepper hoping for a nice crust.  I'll need to add more than this, next time.

On to the trusty Traeger at 225*F.  Heat probes set to alarm at 145*F.

Pulled off the smoker, and set in the fridge stark naked to cool.  I want it firm enough to slice, and it'll be too wiggly when warm.

The moments of truth!  Time to slice and taste!

So...those pieces were too long, and apparently my pan is wayyyy hotter in the middle.  I meeeeean...I ate them, because it's bacon.  Pictured here with "thick cut" bacon from the grocery.  We had to try them at the same time.  For science.

Oh, well.  I diced up the stuff I'd trimmed off the sides and made an omelet, and I was just fine.

So, I cut the piece I was cutting strips from in half.  MUCH better results.

So...I had breakfast for dinner.

The whole point of The Illusion of Sophistication is that you can have fantastic results with minimal effort.  Prepping the pork belly took MAYbe twenty minutes.  A week later, it was on the smoker for about two hours while I napped.  When you do the math, I ended up with some killer bacon for just over $3.00 per pound.

Next time, I'll run the smoker at 180*F and probably end up going closer to three hours (depending on how fast the meat comes up to temp), because I'd like a more intense smoke flavor.  I'll measure the cure mix for each piece of meat separately for more precision.