butternut squash cheesecake

This is a 6.5" spring form pan because I don't want excess sweets around for longer than a few days. This is a good size pan even for a party because people usually act all, "oh-just-a-little-piece-for-me" about dessert anyway, then I end up with half a gigantic cheese cake, or even a regular cake for that matter I really don't want it around no matter how good it is because then I must take it around and beg it off on people then go around again to retrieve my plates or fell compelled to eat it and I don't want that. How else do you imagine I maintain my slender boyish figure?

I intended to halve a successful recipe based on chocolate and apply that halved recipe to butternut squash. That didn't work out as I first visualized. I could tell I needed more than half the amount of cream cheese and it wasn't possible to halve three eggs. Well it is possible, but I didn't want to. So it's possible this mixture turns out a little bit eggy. Maybe not.

The mixture is made more interesting with sour cream, 1/2 cup in the original recipe, a few tablespoons for this one. The original has a chocolate ganache topping, this one has a topping of sour cream (+ sugar +vanilla).

I didn't want spices to discolor the mixture so I left them out, although I did like the ginger and orange from the previous pie so I put those things in -- grated fresh ginger and grated orange peel, so-called zest because it's definitely zesty. Pinch of salt. I started out with 1/4 cup sugar, tasted, deemed insufficiently sweet, then increased by a few tablespoons. Vanilla in the mixture, because everything's better with vanilla. Woot!

As to the butternut: My mixer is such a clever thing, it has an additional shaft, usually covered, that allows a small processor or a blender to be attached. In that smaller processor which saves the trouble of dragging out another heavy-duty motor device, the Cuisinart, I processed to slurry 1/2 a large butternut squash that I had roasted previously and saved specifically for this. It does such fine job in that smaller processing bowl. Added the processed butternut slurry to the cheese/sour cream/ egg/ sugar/ vanilla mixture and tasted. Insufficient flavor intensity. Processed half a sweet potato that was roasted earlier and saved along with the butternut squash and added that too. So now, by weight and by mass I have exceeded the amount of non-cheese cake flavoring material that corresponds to the chocolate in the original recipe, which was a mere 6 oz. So I really don't know but I can intuit how the egg will set up all this gourd and root material. I do like to live dangerously on the edge of failure like that. I tasted again. The filling with its raw egg tasted excellent. So that's how I arrived at the filling. Call it what you will, I'm calling it cheesecake because it has 12 oz. of cream cheese even though it has more than that of butternut squash and sweet potato.

Butternut squash cheesecake <---See? Truth in advertising.

The crust is standard graham cracker crust except with ginger snaps comprising 50% of the biscuits used. Melted butter added to the crumbs and pressed into the pan to form a new cookie-type crust, just like normal, mindful that the ginger snaps had a little too much butter to begin with. Baked in a water bath on low heat (325℉) for 45 minutes. Allowed to cool down inside the oven with the oven door open, then chilled to set.

I am not showing all of the gourd cutting, roasting, oiling, scooping, and processing because it's boring and it's just a mess anyway. The photos are not instructive or interesting. And I will not show the mixing of ingredients because -- why bother? -- it's just a bunch of crap in a mixer. You've seen it a million times, you can imagine it. Eh, it was pale orange. Here is the finished cheesecake

* in a water bath in the oven

* removed from oven but not yet freed from spring form pan

* topped with sweetened and vanilla-ized sour cream.

* and way up there ↑ at the top of the post, chilled and served.

butternut squash, sweet potato pie

This is a small pie, tiny actually, because I don't want it around for a week preventing me from getting on with the next thing. Is that weird or what? It's made of one smallish butternut squash and 1/2 a sweet potato and there is about 50% surplus filling. The pie crust was started with 1 cup flour and 3/4 stick butter with another tablespoon added because a portion of the flour looked insufficiently butterfied. No lard this time, no Crisco. The dough was rolled thickly.

I cannot describe how brilliantly delicious this filling is. I taste tested at each step and enjoyed it all along the way. It got better and better as I went along. The whole process was rather impulsive. The roasted butternut is already sweet as it is and would probably be fine left alone, I hesitated adding sweet potato, but that did add depth, although already sweet and hoping to avoid the mixture becoming saccharine, I added sugar anyway and that made it even better. The sugar was creamed with egg which would be the thing that firmed the filling into a sliceable pie, (2 jumbo eggs) and a few tablespoons butter. Then vanilla, because vanilla makes everything better, then grated ginger, BANG! Nobody ever expects ginger, Then grated orange peel, which I must say was masterstroke. Melody and I ate the filling just like that, raw egg and all.

I Tasted the crust separately and I like that all by itself too. It would go great with coffee in the form of little cookies. Together, crust and filling, they're stupendous.

Butternut squash halved, oiled and roasted (1 hour @ 325℉) along with whole yams oiled. White and brown sugar, butter, and egg whipped in mixer. Rasped ginger and orange peel added along with vanilla.

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato approximately 70%/30% scooped from roasted shell and added hot by spoonful into mixer while rotating to temper the egg/sugar mixture before adding in bulk. I just kept adding squash until I got the desired thickness.

Tasted, I keep doing that to see where I'm at, plus I didn't have breakfast. I did not add condensed milk or Eagle brand as customary for this sort of thing, nor milk or cream, nor spices because I didn't want the color to darken. I liked the way the uncooked mixture (raw egg) tasted but I did want trace spices to finish so I added them in a single layer internally. Filled the pie 1/2 way, sprinkled moderately with cinnamon and allspice, then continued filling and sprinkled moderately again on the surface. That's the only spice added, save for the ginger and the orange peel within the mixture. Clever, eh?

The crust is made the farm lady way. I should put a couple water balloons under my shirt to really get into the whole method-acting feel of it. Cubed cold butter smashed directly into flour seasoned with sugar, salt, and a little cinnamon. Continue smashing until the flour is fully butterated and the butter is fully floured. That's the best way I have to describe it. There should be small chunks of butter but not large chunks, and all the flour should have some fat connected to it. The flour should be fairly fatty, whether you use butter, lard, or Crisco, or any combination of those three. Then add water sparingly in increments while mixing and moving with the aim of using as little water as possible. I keep the tap running on cold and let it drip off my fingertips of one hand while the other hand is stirring. Just enough to barely hold the mass together. BARELY! It's fun, like Play Doh.

Press together in a wad, wrap and chill. This gives time for the water to disperse itself molecularly evenly throughout the ball via the miracle of osmosis, or summat. . Bakers call it "relaxing the dough" but I call it "allowing the water to evenly disperse". Chilling keeps the fat particles hard. You don't want the fat to liquify or to become homogenized throughout the flour because the slight irregularity of the fat is how you achieve flakes, the best you could get otherwise is crumbly crust which isn't at all bad but it's not as fantastic as flakiness is. It's why I chose not to process dough in pulses like experts recommend and it's why my crust is better than theirs, even better than Martha Stewart's. That right, I said it, my pie crust is better than Martha Stewart's. Press it out by hand, then roll it flat. It should be slightly crumbly while rolling and somewhat difficult to handle. If it's too cooperative, you've probably added too much water. You can either correct it with flour or proceed, it's your gamble. I like to roll it thickly for a stacked flake-flake-flake effect. As I already said, this dough makes excellent little cookies.

Pie shell pre-baked. It was not chilled first, nor was it protected with weight as experts do, so it collapsed a little and shrank slightly but not enough to ruin it. The top was decorated with extra trimmings and placed to disguise the collapsed deformity, but unevenly, zen-like, as if leaves fell randomly, which is completely irrelevant here because it will hardly last long enough for anyone to notice.

sweet potato, butternut squash soup

Apparently the most downloaded holiday recipe from the NYT online site. The following recipe is nicked from the NYT.

[ This silky fall/winter puree tastes rich, though there is no cream or butter in it.


1 tablespoon canola oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 pound butternut squash, peeled and diced

1 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

1 medium-size Yukon gold or russet potato, peeled and diced

6 cups water, chicken stock, or vegetable stock

Salt to taste

1. Heat the oil in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger and stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the squash, sweet potatoes, regular potato, and water or stock, and bring to a simmer. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes, or until all of the ingredients are thoroughly tender.

2. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup (or you can put it through the fine blade of a food mill or use a regular blender, working in batches and placing a kitchen towel over the top to avoid splashing). Return to the pot and stir with a whisk to even out the texture. Heat through, adjust salt and add pepper to taste. ]

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What? No butter? No cream? That's nonsense. I put both in mine. What would be the point of leaving them out? If NYT was serious about health they'd have insisted on salt-free home-made chicken broth and not leave it to their readers to error by ruining their soup with overly salty canned broth or even broth in a carton which is an improvement but only hardly. It's barely bullion and water. Home-made chicken broth is 100% aspic, the gelatin extracted from bone marrow, and infinitely richer than commercial broth. Period. Right here is where your broth is put to best use. Ferchristssake. Also, I positively do not understand the dearth of spices. What are they, ascetics over there at the NYT or what? Yo no lo comprendo. Surely, they're intending this as merely a starting point for their reader's own elaboration. This recipe screams for touches of cinnamon, specks of clove, possibly allspice, and definitely nutmeg. Garlic pairs naturally with ginger and goes excellently well with gourds. All of that in amounts so minute compared to the total volume, that it's barely noticeable and in no wise competes with the flavors of roasted sweet potato and butternut squash but adds mysterious flavor and body that has to be tasted to be believed. The potato is almost gratuitous. It's there to add starch and to thicken the soup. I do not understand not suggesting roasting the vegetables rather than just jumping right in and boiling them. Boiling vegetables dilutes their naked flavor into the water, on the other hand, roasting them develops flavor and intensifies it. The depth and breadth of complexity of flavors is completely absent by simply boiling them. Roasting the vegetables causes them to caramelize and then the caramelization undergoes further complex chemical reactions. The sweetness of roasted vegetables is simply outstanding.

I'm such a dunce. After all that, I forgot to buy ginger. Luckily I have crystalized ginger and powdered ginger, but those are whole 'nuther animals. I used both but understated them because they are different and I didn't want the soup to be BANG !, ginger.

Used a couple of leeks because I had them and wanted to use them. They were roasted along with the gourds and potatoes.

This soup would benefit from some citric. Grated orange peel would be excellent.

It would not be harmed by chile pepper flakes. Paprika, dashes of Tabasco, habanero. Anything hot. It could even stand a few dashes of your favorite curry. Look, if you're going to all the trouble of making your own soup, then plan a party for your mouth. That's my attitude.