Pumpkin Cheesecake with Marshmallow Sour Cream Topping

I love Thankgiving. It could be that my birthday is always peeking around the corner (and even actually falls on Thankgiving every seven years). Or it could be that I love the fall seasonal flavors and markets overflowing with big fat sweet potatoes and juicy crisp apples (be sure to get your hands on some honeycrisp apples!). But, for me, it has very little to do with turkey.

Have you ever played Cranium?! It's a game that does a little bit of trivia mixed with some charades and a healthy dose of pictionary. Anyway, the game has a challenge where a word or phrase like "Superbowl" is said aloud and then you and your team mates each secretly write down the first three words that come to mind and hope that at least 2 of you has one word in common. No big deal, right?! Not so. I can't tell you how many times I have done this with a team and failed. Miserably. And then a shouting match follows with "How could you possibly think of [insert completely off-base word here]?!! Are you kidding me! Clearly, the first word to come to mind is [insert perfectly appropriate word here]!!" My point is that if the Cranium word/phrase was "Thanksgiving," I cannot say with certainty that everyone would write down turkey. I might have written pumpkin.

Because what I really L-O-V-E is pumpkin. Did anyone get to try the pumpkin-five spice ice cream from Humphrey Slocombe?! I've been hearing some raves about the Guiness Gingerbread, which, after many, many scoops of the Russian Imperial Stout ice cream from Notoberfest, I am a true believer of the beer infused ice creams.

In honor of pumpkin, I wanted to share with you the star of the Thanksgiving show:

Pumpkin Cheesecake with a Marshmallow Sour Cream topping and studded with glazed pecans.

The pumpkin cheesecake is rich and dense, but it buckles under a thin layer of sweet sticky marshmallow creme with the tang of sour cream to balance it all out. It's incredibly indulgent. And incredibly impressive.

This recipe is from Bon Appetit, November 2008 edition. I should mention that I left out the crystallized ginger and used reduced-fat cream cheese and was completely happy with the results.