RECIPE: No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake

I love the new girl on the Food Network, Claire Robinson. It might be her accent (she's a southern girl too) or her point of view with the 5 ingredients and all. Either way, she's my new favorite! I've made a couple of her recipes and they've turned out delicious! Over the weekend she made a Ginger Pumpkin Tart and I thought it looked so yummy. My husband on the other hand, doesn't eat pumpkin anything so that leaves a whole pie for me. If I were a stick-pole, then it would be okay for me to eat the whole pie by myself. But I'm not. So I choose to make pumpkin flavored recipes in single servings I can freeze or entire recipes that can be taken to a friend's house for dinner.

At the end of last year, I picked up about 8 boxes of Pumpkin Pie Jell-O Pudding. This recipe used my last two boxes of pudding...so I'm hoping the makers of Jell-O are going to be putting more on the market again this year. On the box is a recipe for Pumpkin Pie Mousse with a pecan sprinkle topping. Sounded good to me, so I'm going to use that to top my no bake cheesecake. I combined the gingerbread cookie crumb crust from Claire Robinson's recipe and the topping from the Jell-O pudding box. This is what I came up with:

No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake
for the crust:
40 traditional gingerbread cookies
4 tablespoons butter, melted
for the filling:
8 oz block cream cheese, softened
1 cup milk
2 boxes Pumpkin Pie Jell-O pudding
8 oz non dairy whipped topping (cool whip), thawed

for the topping:
1 cup non dairy whipped topping (cool whip), thawed
2 tablespoons melted butter
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add cookies to food processor bowl and process until it becomes fine crumbs. Pour melted butter down the processor pipe and process to blend butter and gingerbread crumbs.

Pour mixture into the bottom of a springform pan. Using a flat bottom glass or measuring cup, press and form the crust in the bottom of the pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes. Remove and allow to cool at room temperature.

For the filling: In a large mixing bowl, add softened cream cheese, pudding mixes and 1 cup milk. Using a hand mixer, beat until light and fluffy and well combined. (When I was mixing this, I beat the cream cheese and then added one pudding pouch -- yea -- don't do that...it turned into a gluey mess. Once I added the milk and the other pudding pouch, it looked good -- thanks goodness!)

With a rubber spatula, fold in 8 oz whipped topping.
Pour filling into cooled crust. And level the top.

For the topping: Spread 1 cup whipped topping over the top of the pumpkin filling. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. (I sprinkled some gingerbread crumb over the top, just because.)

When ready to serve, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon in a small bowl and stir until well combined. Sprinkle evenly over the top of the chilled pumpkin cheesecake and serve.


Do you see those bubbles??? Yep, I messed up!!! I didn't let the pecan mixture cool before sprinkling it over the top. The heat melted the whipped topping and made it bubble up. It didn't look very appetizing but it did taste delicious!

Enjoy!