Pumpkin Cheesecake with Brown Sugar Bourbon Cream

Ahh, the perils of hosting Thanksgiving dinner. This year, my family hosted 10 people at my parents’ house and my mom magically figured out how to fit all of us around the dining room table. We had the usual slight conflict in the kitchen (sorry for yelling at you, Ariel; you’re a great tater-tot shaper) and last-minute menu changes (the aforementioned tots, sweet potato style!).

But pretty much no matter the circumstances--who hosts, how many guests, so on and so forth--the dessert table is top notch at our family & friends Thanksgiving celebrations. The lower photo on the right? That's the Thanksgiving dessert table, 2009 edition.

This year, my mom graciously asked me early on what I’d like to make for dessert so I’d have “dibs” on whatever it was. The brown sugar cheesecake with bourbon caramel sauce from two years ago still sticks in my mind as extraordinarily tasty, but I wasn’t going to settle for a repeat dessert. Luckily, America’s Test Kitchen came to the rescue, as they often do, with a timely e-mail containing a video for spiced pumpkin cheesecake with brown sugar bourbon cream. (I had to lift my chin off the floor, too.)

As you know if you’ve read any of my previous posts, I trust America’s Test Kitchen & Cook’s Illustrated to provide perfect recipes that don’t need any adaptation. This holds true here with one exception--I swapped the graham cracker crust for a gingersnap crust. Let it be known that Trader Joe’s triple ginger cookies are INSANE. They have little bits of crystallized ginger in them which magically stayed nearly whole even after I decimated the cookies in the food processor. It also doesn’t hurt to save a few of the cookies and crumble them on top of the decadent whipped topping. DO NOT skip the step where you remove excess liquid from the pumpkin puree; it’s essential to maintaining a fluffly, not dense, cheesecake filling.

Now, what to do with the leftover brown sugar bourbon cream...