Pumpkin & Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake

This year, I promised myself I wouldn’t do another pumpkin recipe during the Thanksgiving period, especially after experiencing ‘pumpkin overload’ from previous years (i.e. Starbucks selling ‘Pumpkin Lattes’ etc).

However, this year I couldn’t help myself (again). I decided the story must be told for Pumpkin and Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake. This recipe came about almost by accident: I wanted to create a swirl effect using pumpkin puree and cheesecake, however there wasn’t enough contrast in color between the two elements. How could I create more drama and contrast in this dessert? By adding some swirls of chocolate, of course!

At first glance, it may seem that there may be too many flavors going on here; pumpkin, chocolate, cream cheese, REALLY? But everything works nicely- the pumpkin flavor is subtle with the chocolate creating a nice accent. For my recipe, I used Butternut Pumpkin (or ‘Butternut Squash’ for U.S. residents), but you can use canned pumpkin if you wish.

For this recipe, 1/2 of the pumpkin- cream cheese mixture is first added to the prepared crust and then 4-5 spoonfuls of melted chocolate are added on top. This process is repeated again and then a knife tip is used to swirl the chocolate throughout the mixture. A thin layer of the crust mixture is sprinkled around the rim of the cheesecake before baking for added decoration.

I served this dessert last night for a dinner party and one of the guests commented that the crust was so good, that it could have been served as a dessert in itself!

So, I’ve learned a lesson here- don’t make any promises that you can’t keep. I promise not to promise next year to avoid any more pumpkin recipes (even Starbucks’ pumpkin lattes can’t turn me away)- I just love pumpkin too much!

P.S. Would love it if you’d ‘like’ my G’day Souffle’ Facebook page- it would make my day!