Pumpkin Cheesecake

For Thanksgiving I made a pumpkin cheesecake. I'm pretty traditionalist when it comes to the holidays and I always make pumpkin pie but I thought I would try something different. I'm soo glad I did.

I originally found this recipe and was all excited to do it. Until I got to the part where it said submerge spring form pan in water. That just sounded like way too much work. But I loved the idea of a  ginger snap crust and the caramel praline topping. So I kept those and used Paula Deen's pumpkin cheesecake recipe.

The Results:

Overall I would totally do this again. There's a couple of things I would tweak. I would probably cook the caramel a little longer, it didn't thicken up as much as I would like. Also the crust. I don't know if I used too many cookies or it was the fact that for some reason my spring form pan was leaking but it turned out sooo hard and it was pretty thick. Everyone else said it was fine. I'm not sure if they were just being nice or if it really was fine. The whole thing ended up getting eaten so I guess it wasn't that bad. I didn't have my food processor with me so I may be able to get the cookies more finely crushed that way then with a mallet. 

The cheesecake itself was delicious, just the right amount of pumpkin flavor. I would totally try other Paula recipes, they're easier to follow than Alton Brown and his weighted measurements. I don't care if weighing ingredients is supposed to make me a better baker.:-P

Has anyone else tried any new recipes this holiday season with good results? or bad?