A Trick and a Treat

Here is a cheesecake I did for Halloween. Not because I had a party to go to or anything, just because the idea came to me....and I HAD to make it. Not sure what that says about me, but either way, this cheesecake turned out amazingly!

I wanted to do a pumpkin cheesecake for the orange color, but also because of the fall flavors that are in season now. By pairing it with an oreo cookie crust, I achieved a great black and orange look too.

Once I made the pumpkin batter, I quickly realized I didn't know how to approach the web idea that I had envisioned in my head. If I drizzled chocolate on after it was baked, would it work, or just smear? I wasn't sure. But, I wasn't sure what would happen if I did it prior either. I ended up just creating the spider web with melted chocolate that I poured onto the pumpkin batter before baking and hoped for the best. It actually worked way better than I thought! The chocolate sort of dried out and cracked as it baked, and gave it an even more eerie feel than expected. I was very happy with the results.

Next step, after the cheesecake cooled, was to make the spiced vanilla mousse. All my cheesecakes (except the turtle one, because frankly, with all that caramel and chocolate and nuts on top, it has enough going on!) have a flavored mousse of some kind piped around the edges. Usually they are done with a fancy tip, but it just didn't feel right using a star tip for a scary spider cheesecake. So, I just used a round tip and winged it. The result is some kind of spooky castley/tombstoney looking things. Some people thought they were ghosts, which is fine too.

The funniest part of this, was that I thought I'd be able to just melt some chocolate and start piping some realistic looking spiders. However, the first few spiders I piped ended up looking more like retarded ants. After a quick trip to my favorite place, googleville, I found some photos to work from, and finally started getting better results.

A quick dusting of nutmeg all over the whole cake, and my masterpiece was complete. Not only did this one look amazing, but the taste was ridiculous. I can't believe how good it was. It was very much like pumpkin pie, but had a light and fluffy texture and wasn't too sweet.

I plan to make this for Thanksgiving using a ginger snap crust, or maybe a cinnamon almond cookie crust instead of oreos, and just using the star tip for the mousse...sans spiders of course too! Cheesecakes are fun, yo!