food comas

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!

As Natalya mentioned in her Apple Cider from Scratch post, sadly we did not host our annual Thanksgiving Eve Dinner this year. There have been many changes over the last few months; most notably changes in permanent address. After five amazing years of dining, cooking, and hosting awesome meals together in NYC, we have moved onto the next chapter of our lives… which at the moment means California for Natalya and Singapore for me. The blog has taken a backseat due to all the other stuff going on in our lives, but hopefully we will get back to updating it more frequently soon ish. I still have tons of NYC restaurants to post that are sitting unfinished in drafts that I want to clear before I start on on the Singapore dining scene.

I am still getting settled here in Asia, and probably one of my biggest obstacles has been navigating the grocery stores here (I really miss the TriBeCa Whole Foods). Products have all different names and I spent a good 10 minutes in the dairy section trying to google the Singaporean equivalent of heavy cream (it’s these small cartons of cooking cream).

Spending my first Thanksgiving out of the United States was a bit sad, but Natalya and I were both detemined to keep the tradition alive of cooking Thanksgiving meals in our respective locations. Natalya roasted our favorite Hank the chicken for her family, while I attempted to make my first roasted turkey… breast. My Singapore kitchen lacks a proper built-in oven; I only have one of those countertop convection ovens that would never be able to handle a 14 lb turkey (not that I really would consider trying). Plus, I was only cooking for a party of four: a couple Singaporeans and a Brit that I convinced to celebrate a belated Thanksgiving Brunch with me on Sunday. I roasted a small turkey breast and made a Roasted Vegetable Salad to start. For the side dishes, I made some Roasted Asparagus and Purée of Garlic Potatoes.

The only “new recipe” I decided to make a go at was dessert. I’m really not a baker so I just found the simplest recipe available online: Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake. I couldn’t find any regular sized ready made pie crusts, but did manage to snag a 6 pack of Keebler® mini graham cracker pie crusts, which were so cute! And the perfect serving size per person for my small party.

I ended up halving the recipe below to fill six mini pies, but I left the original recipe proportions for your guide. I also couldn’t find any pumpkin purée in my store, but did find canned pumpkin pie filling. Basically that is pumpkin purée with all the spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, gloves) already mixed in so you can skip the step where you add spices to the pumpkin mixture.

I loved how creamy, sweet, and EASY this recipe was! I am not much of a baker, but this recipe is really difficult to mess up.

Mini Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake (recipe from AllRecipes.com)

Yields: 8 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 C white sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 C pumpkin purée (or pumpkin pie filling, in which case you can skip the add-in spices below)
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch ground cloves
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg
• 1/2 C whipped topping
• 1 9 inch prepared graham cracker crust (or 12 mini graham cracker crusts)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Blend in eggs one at a time. Remove 1 cup of batter and spread into bottom of crust; set aside.

Add pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to the remaining batter and stir gently until well blended. Carefully spread over the batter in the crust.

Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until center is almost set. Allow to cool, then refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

Cover with whipped topping before serving and enjoy the taste of Thanksgiving!