Pumpkin Cheesecake (and a little something extra)!

This is the start of a BAKING MARATHON for my fire crew's party tomorrow night. I have my folks to feed, and that damn cute boy from the last post, so it's going to be a party in my kitchen tonight.

So it starts with pumpkin cheesecake. I am being lazy and I misplaced my pie pan somewhere in moving, so I started with a pre-made graham cracker crust.

For the filling:

1 package cream cheese
1 15 oz can of pumpkin
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
Secret ingredient!

It's best to let the cream cheese soften for a bit... or you can rush like me. Either way you mix it all together and put it in the crust. I ended up with more filling than I had room for though. So I put the cheesecake in the 345 degree oven and started on my next project.

Left over cheesecake filling means cheesecake bars!

So I whipped up something for the bottom:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
Splash in some vanilla
Secret Ingredient
1 stick melted butter.

So you mix that all together and press it into a greased 9" x 9" pan. Then I poured the cheesecake filling on top. I sprinkled that with some brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and threw it into the oven with the cheesecake.

2 types of delicious from 1 tasty filling!

Pumpkin Cheesecake:

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars:

Edit after cutting the bars:

Way to much sugar in the bottom part of the bars. They are damn tasty, but a very strange texture. The very bottom almost sort of carmelized and they are super chewy and kind of fudgy. I don't understand really, but they taste good so I'll feed them to my coworkers anyway ^_^

Back to Basics...

Tomorrow will be an awesome Dr. Who (season 6) marathon. So, of course, I have to bake something. Who could pass up a gathering of fine, geeky folks to feed? So I asked the very cute boy who is hosting the gathering what sort of baked goods he liked, and the reply was yellow cake. Simple enough.

And did I mention that it's Friday night? Cause it is. And though I am enjoying my Friday night by staying in and being all domestic (baking, cleaning, adventure!), it is still Friday night. So I'm finishing off a good portion of a bottle of rum while I'm at it!

So yellow cake:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
A dash of salt
1 stick of butter (my last stick! oh no!)
1 cup milk (Silk PureCoconut milk for me!)
2 eggs
A splash of vanilla.

Mixed all together by my lovely (I'm still infatuated with the new shiny toy) Kitchenaid stand mixer. Add a dash of secret ingredient, and in the pan. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes and cake! Hooray!

Sadly, as I had to use up my last stick of butter for the cake... it is getting frosting from a can. And my bottle of rum is empty! Why is the rum always gone?