Crack Kills....

So, I made my first attempt at from-scratch cheesecake tonight. It's a pumpkin swirl cheesecake...plan cheesecake swirled with pumpkin cheesecake (spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, etc) on a ginger-pecan crust. I was all proud of it til I pulled it out of the oven and....

PPPPPFFFFTTTT! It's all cracked up on the top. Booo! That sucks.

We are having dinner at P's mom and dad's house tomorrow night with SIL/BIL and the kids....it's Trick or Treating out in the little town his parents live in, so we are having chili and and SIL is making spinach-artichoke dip, and I thought to myself, what better dessert to have on a day when it's supposed to be 50 and rainy than something "pumpkiny"? I wanted it to be pretty, and impressive. I hope it's good.

Actually, I ate like 10 spoonfuls of the pumpkin batter. Um, yeah, if the cooked version tastes anything like the batter version....then yes, it's good.

I got to use my KitchenAid stand mixer too....which I shamefully admit I clamored for years to get the silver KA stand mixer, finally got it for Christmas last year...and I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it. Well, it's never too late to start, right?

I SUCK at cooking, anyhow. I'd rather throw chicken nuggets on a cookie sheet and call it a day than actually cook anything. It's just messy and time consuming. If it were just me, I'd eat a can of soup or a bowl of cereal and be good with that. Don't get me wrong, I cook, I just don't fancy-cook. At least, I haven't in the past. I'm trying to get better at it. Obviously, cheesecakes aren't my strong point, though.

Well, I think it's finally cooled enough to put in the fridge (I frantically googled "how to tell if a cheesecake is done" a while ago b/c I couldn't tell...and found a very nice website explaining to let it cool then stick the whole springform pan in the fridge for 12-24 hours to let it set up....so that's what I'm doing and I hope it's right!)...and I've gotta hit the sack. I'm meeting Rach and Laci at the coffee stand at Erie St. Market at 9AM for some Farmer's Market and Libbey Glass shopping. Then we found this little diner down there that sells pumpkin pancakes only on Saturdays and only in October. And since this is the last weekend in October (!!!) we are going to enjoy them. P, K and I are also going to the pumpkin patch with the IL's and the kids to pick pumpkins...good thing it's supposed to be freezing cold and rainy all day....hopefully the weather holds out! I'm not ready for this cold stuff yet, but it doesn't appear to care that I'm not prepared.