...3 comments, yep that's all, just three. So yeah, yeah, I know I don't have a huge following or anything, but with all the begging on facebook I anticipated much more suggestions! And that's all the complaining I will do, and to those who did give an idea thank you very much. I read through and liked all three. I decided to make today a pumpkin day and in the near future I think I will combine the other two ideas and make an ice cream cake italian cream cheesecake masterpiece!
Before I could get started baking I had to run up to the pick 'n pull with my brother to get my dad's birthday present. He just bought a Ford Ranger but the seats are crap. When you plop your butt down it bottoms out and hits the metal frame, and he's got a little butt....I mean he's only 5'3" and might weigh 125lbs, so if he's bottoming out its bad. So my brother had the great idea to buy him some replacement seats at the pick 'n pull for his birthday present. And now, for those of you who are wondering what in the hell a pick 'n pull is, it is an auto salvage yard. It's like a car graveyard where they take destroyed cars and let people come out and rummage through to find the parts they need to fix their car. You just show up with some tools to take out the part you need and pay next to nothing for it. We bought two bucket seats for $75 today probably saved around $500 vs. new prices. The only problem is that you never know what you will run into when you get there. We looked through all the Rangers they had and couldn't find a seat that was worth the effort so we ended up taking some from a mini-van. My brother had a good point, "dad has a welder, so anything will work!"
Once we got home I got busy in the kitchen while my brother played with my baby. She's pretty irresistible!
Like I mentioned earlier, I decided to do everything pumpkin today. Since I've never made a pumpkin pie before, I decided that would be a great place to start. I'm thinking that before I go screwing with a timeless classic like pumpkin pie, I had better make one the right way to start with. So I just followed the recipe on the Libby's can. It was some spices, some evaperated milk, pumpkin mush and a pie crust. Since I usually have a couple of crusts frozen I decided to use one of those. And like a good boy I made a pumpkin pie just like the recipe told me!!!! Boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This one was pretty good, tasted like homemade pumpkin pie!
Since I had never made a pumpkin pie before I was a bit concerned about how full to fill the pie crust. The recipe said it makes one pie so I dumped all the batter into the pie crust but it was full to the top. My fear was that as it bakes it is going to swell or inflate or somehow become bigger than the container and create a mess bigger than Dallas. So I called around and finally got my mother-in-law who said that yes it will do exactly what I was afraid of....crap! So I dumped half of it back into the mixer bowl and proceeded with the directions to bake.
Now, I had a pumpkin pie in the oven baking and enough pumpkin pie mix to do another pie, but I didn't have another crust thawed and don't really want two pumpkin pies so I decided to go rogue!
As I laid (or lied which is it?) in bed this morning I was thinking about making some pumpkin pie batter and some cheesecake batter, then swirling them together in a pie crust since the baking times are very similar. Great idea right? Well until I made the batter....cuz cheesecake is way thicker than pumpkin pie stuff so I don't know how well the swirl thing would work. And let me tell you, I was on the verge of trying it anyway but my wife stopped me. Not physically but mentally... She always gets on to me for using every bowl in the house when I bake, and since I had the pumpkin pie batter(is that what you call it? I'm not really sure) in the mixing bowl I would have had to dump it into another bowl to make the cheesecake, then swirl the two together. This would dirty another bowl and cause my wife to give me a hard time, so I chose not to. I decided, instead, to just make a pumpkin pie cheesecake, so I started by dumping the pumpkin pie stuff into another bowl so I could start the cheesecake batter....hahaha, yeah I know, it defeated the whole purpose but I wanted to let you into how my little brain works(sorta).
For the pumpkin pie cheesecake I made my 3-2-minus the-1 cheesecake recipe only I decided to get adventurous, I decided to use 4 eggs instead of 2, and a lot of times I will add a tsp of lemon juice but today when I opened the refrigerator I saw key limes. So I decided to squeeze one of those into the mix. Then I added the pumpkin stuff and mixed it all a while. Since I had used evaporated milk in the pumpkin stuff I decided not to use the sweetened condensed milk but a quick taste let me know I needed some sugar. I ended adding half a cup of sugar, and I wanted to try to make one that didn't collapse so I added a tsp of baking soda, and I threw in a cup of flour. Once I got it all mixed up, the consistency was pretty close to normal so I dumped it over a graham-cracker crust in my spring form pan.
Delicious.
The only problem with this was that, once again, I had extra batter.
Sometime during the day my wife told me about something she on pinterest, somebody had used cinnamon rolls for a pie crust.....GENIUS!!!!!!!! So without delay I pulled out a can of cinnamon rolls from the fridge and sliced them to use for my crust, then squeezed them all into a square glass pan and dumped the cheesecake batter on top. And bake it like a regular cheesecake.
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| Viewing the bottom of the pan. |
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| Left is the pumpkin pie cheesecake on the cinnamon roll crust. Right is pumpkin pie. |
And then I remembered, the pumpkin pie idea on my blog said it needs to have lots of fiber and protein to balance the carbs and calories.....oooops I made everything she said she can't eat!
So I tore through the cupboard trying to find something high in fiber with no idea in mind......
I found this whole wheat baking mix that says somewhere on the box that its a great source of fiber. After I made the cinnamon roll crust above, I actually looked at the recipe my wife was talking about and learned that they had just made a normal pie crust, covered in cinnamon/sugar, rolled it up and sliced thin to make a crust that looks like cinnamon rolls. So I decided to give it a try! I used 2 cups of the whole wheat baking mix(kinda like bisquick), a stick and a half of butter, 1 tsp salt and a Tbsp of sugar, and some ice water to make a pie crust. Then I rolled it out, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, rolled it into a log then cut off little cinnamon rolls for my crust.
I racked my brain trying to think of how to make pumpkin pie have more fiber and protein, then I decided to google "high protein baking". I didn't really find anything that helped me too much, but there was a recipe for high protein banana bread. I didn't bother looking at it, but I said to myself "I have a banana in the freezer that I've been planning to use for some banana bread, why not throw that in the mix." So I did! Then as I kept looking I found THE solution, peanut butter! It's full of protein. So here's what I did.
3 heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter
1 banana
1 can pumpkin mush
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
1.5 tsp ground cloves
1.5 tsp ground allspice
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp apple pie spice
1/2 cup sugar
I had a little more than would fit in the pie plate so I just poured it into 3 ramekins and ended up baking for about 30 mins.
After baking at 350 degrees for 50 minutes this is what it looked like.
This one could benefit from chocolate I think!!!!
Thanks for making me a healthy pumpkin treat! You 're a great guy, even if you are my brother :)
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