No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake-Soup

Or, squeeze your pumpkins!

The last of my pumpkin dishes from Saturday - and the whole raison d'etre for even getting a humongo pumpkin in the first place - was a pumpkin cheesecake. Which sort of became a pumpkin-flavoured cream cheese soup But it was still tasty anyway (thanks to the addition of a WHOLE tin of condensed milk) which is really all that counts.

I may have mentioned earlier this week that I'd steamed the pumpkin for about half an hour, to ensure the flesh got soft enough for mashing. The problem with steaming, though, is that the pumpkin flesh gets a little too watery. And since I was soooooo eager for cheesecake (piggy!) I didn't bother trying to spend ages squeezing all the liquid out of the streamed pumpkin - which resulted in a sloppy yellow-tinged mush that never set. We're eating it with a spoon anyway, it's still yummy.

Anyway, if you're interested, here's the incredibly easy recipe for no-bake pumpkin cheesecake.

Ingredients

Base:

1/2 pack of plain HobNobs (or similar digestive biscuits)

1/2 pack of dark chocolate Hobnobs (or similar)

100gms of butter

Filling

600gms cream cheese

1/2 large pumpkin (steamed, mashed and DRAINED)

400gms sweetened condensed milk

Crush the plain HobNobs into fine crumbs (you may find it easier to do this with a food processor, but I just used my hands. My strong, powerful hands.) You can leave the dark chocolate HobNobs as bigger, rougher crumbs so you get more chocolatey bits to bite into. Place the biscuit crumbs into a springform cake tin.

Melt the butter and mix it through the biscuit crumbs to bind them together. Use more butter if the crumbs don't stick together properly. Now's not the time to be worrying about your expanding waistline. Use the bottom of a spoon to press the mixture down into the tin.

Mix the cream cheese, pumpkin mash and condensed milk together (either with a spoon, or a food processor). Pour the deliciousness into the springform tin, on top of the biscuit mixture. Pop into the fridge and let it set for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.

Enjoy!

Chewy Pumpkin Biscuits

The humongous pumpkin I purchased on Saturday was more than enough for the cheesecake I'd planned on making. So, after cutting up and steaming the pumpkin, I separated the cooked, yellowy-orange flesh into two portions - one for the cheesecake, and one for something else. I wondered about freezing steamed pumpkin for later, but my sweet tooth overruled me and I decided on pumpkin biscuits!

You're probably already aware that I'm a fan of the fast and furious, throw-everything-together-and-stir method of baking. So, I came up with a lazy easy recipe for chewy pumpkin biscuits while roasting the pumpkin seeds. The amount of ingredients are fairly approximate, as usual.

Ingredients:

1/3 large pumpkin (steamed, then mashed)

150gm butter

300gm caster sugar

150gm plain flour

150gm self-raising flour

cinnamon (to taste)

nutmeg (to taste)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Cream butter and sugar together.

Add both kinds of flour to butter/sugar mixture, and as much (or as little) of the cinnamon and nutmeg as you like. Give it a slight stir to make sure the spices are fairly evenly distributed throughout.

If your steamed pumpkin flesh is quite watery (as mine was), then try to drain as much of the liquid out as possible, otherwise, your batter may end up far too liquidy. When that's done, add the pumpkin to the dry mixture, and stir everything together.

Once all the parts are mixed together (like brown mush), grab your baking tray (either greased or with baking paper on it) and drop dollops of the batter on it. Use a tablespoon to help you.

Pop it into the baking try and bake for 15-20 minutes, let them cool, then destroy them with your mouth! They're really good dunked into a nice mug of hot chocolate.

SOS (Save Our Seeds!)

While I didn't go to a Halloween party this year, I did try to acknowledge the day by buying a pumpkin. The idea was to make a pumpkin cheesecake (more on that later) but after butchering the pumpkin so I could steam its flesh, I also ended up with quite a few pumpkin seeds. And since I'm loathe to let things go to waste, I decided to roast the seeds instead of chucking them. It's really simple to do, and the seeds make a tasty beer snack.

Once you've scooped all the seeds out of the pumpkin, try and get rid of as much of the stringy pulp as you can. I did this by placing the seeds into a bowl full of water, and picking out the pulp by hand. It doesn't take much time. After you've cleaned the seeds up, place them on a tray or plate to dry for at least half an hour.

When the seeds are fairly dry, start preheating the oven on a low heat - I set mine to 120 degrees Celsius. Place the pumpkin seeds on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Melt a knob of unsalted butter and  pour it over the seeds, coating them evenly. (And if you're microwaving the butter to melt it, please make sure you keep an eye on it or cover it with sometime, or else it explodes all over your microwave and you end up having to clean the greasy bits up. I got my poppet to help me with melting the butter, so he wouldn't feel left out, and that's exactly what happened. Thrice. Because he never learns from his mistakes.)

Add about a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of dried garlic flakes to the buttery seeds, then pop them into the oven to roast for about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them so they don't get burnt, and remove them when they get golden-brown. Once they get cool enough to handle, they're ready to be eaten!

Although I used salt and garlic (you can use fresh minced garlic too, by the way, I just didn't have any), you can adapt the recipe to make a sweet version too. Just be sure to use unsalted butter, and substitute the savoury flavourings for something sweet, like cinnamon and some honey, maybe?

I also made some pumpkin biscuits and a pumpkin cheesecake that night, so check back here soon for the other recipes!

Candyman Comin' Atcha!

 The first day of November has been completely grey and rainy so far, but I kinda like it. Anyway, for those of you missing summer, I've got some candy-coloured nails to help cheer you up!

Fashion Tip

Gah! So much to do this week! I'm leaving you with this, The Great Unwashed will be printed soon, check out the Etsy shop for new and old issues!

Have a good week, everyone!

(Too many exclamation marks? Sorry!)

Jump Around!

Folksy is organising an 'Upcycle Christmas Competition' this year to raise money for the Sue Ryder Care charity, and I'll be taking part in it. The deal is this - you enter, print up a ticket and go to a participating Sue Ryder store to pick up 5 items to upcycle, which you then auction on Folksy, with the proceeds going to Sue Ryder Care. I thought this was an awesome idea, since I get a large portion of my materials from op-shops anyway, and it fits it almost perfectly with the cut-and-paste way I usually work.

So last Saturday, I printed up my ticket and went to the Sue Ryder store in Camden to pick up 5 items to tear apart for charity. It turned out to be slim pickings, as I only had 2 bags of stuff to choose from, but I did manage to dig through and get my mitts on 5 items in the end.

I found this brand new, fairly see-through (though it doesn't appear so in the photo) white cotton mesh tank top and gross, shiny lavender brocade blazer jacket after sifting through some of the other items in the bag. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with them yet, but rest assured that I'll be ripping that disgusting jacket apart. And as you can see from the photos, I graduated with honours from the Kate Bush School of Dance.

More digging, and I was rewarded with this white, knitted, batwinged top with lacey panels. Not completely hideous, now that I look at it again, but I think I'll be unraveling it so I can use the yarn to make up something - maybe a cape? And yes, I am wearing trackies in this photo - please don't judge me, it was before breakfast.

And lastly, I picked up this gigantic stripey men's pyjama set to complete my 5 items. The Mancreature is convinced some old guy died in this. Urgghh! I picked it mainly because it was so large, which meant that I would have loads of material to sew things from.

You can't really see it, but the trousers were ENORMOUS, which resulted in a lot of awkward tucking and folding after I put them on.

I can't wait to start cutting these things up and making pretty little things out of them. (After all, there's been some shocking atrocities committed in the name of charity recently, and it's about time to put things right.) If you're interested in bidding on items in the auction, or you want to take part in the competition, then get thee over to the Folksy site. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Folksy, it's pretty much like Etsy, but with a focus on UK sellers. I'll be posting updates as I finish making stuff.