Pumpkin Cheesecake with Chocolate Crust

A shout-out to all pumpkin lovers – there’s a new easy pumpkin dessert in town! This delicious pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate crust is easy to prepare. The pumpkin cheesecake filling has the wonderful flavours of pumpkin, spices, vanilla, and cream cheese blend together beautifully. Consider this black bottom pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving, Christmas or the autumn.

Consider this easy pumpkin dessert for the holidays. It would be a wonderful cheesecake for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And even Halloween!

The crust for this black bottom pumpkin cheesecake is made with chocolate graham crumbs and butter. This is such a simple crust idea and it’s perfect for cheesecake. So forget the fancy crust recipes. Chocolate grahams and butter are perfect here!

Pumpkin Cheesecake Ingredients

The rich and creamy pumpkin cheesecake filling is also simple to prepare. Along with cream cheese and sour cream for creaminess, you need flour, eggs, salt and sugar. The warm flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves add the perfect flavour. A splash or vanilla extract and of course the pumpkin puree finish off the ingredient list for the filling.

Now you need to look for pure canned pumpkin to make this. It should say something like 100% pumpkin puree. Pumpkin pie filling is already spiced and sweetened. It’s a completely different product, so don’t confuse them!

How to Make Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake

Once you’ve got all the ingredients together you can go ahead and have fun making this easy pumpkin dessert. Whether you are planning to make this cheesecake for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or ‘just because’, you will love it.

The graham crumb crust is really easy to make. Just combine the crumbs with melted butter and press it into a pie dish. With a cheesecake crust this easy to make, you never need to buy a readymade one again.

This recipe requires 2 pie dishes and you can use either 8-inch or 9-inch round pie dishes, depending what you have. Alternatively you could make one large one in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish. That might work better if you want to make one cheesecake for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

The next step is to make the pumpkin cheesecake filling. Combine the cream cheese, sugar and salt, then the eggs one at a time.

Finally mix in all the other ingredients in the list. Spoon the pumpkin mixture on top of the crust. This pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate graham crust takes up to an hour to bake. It might be ready in 45 minutes or 50 but it depends on your oven really. When the sides are set, it’s done. Don’t worry if the center still jiggles – it will firm up.

It’s important to leave this cheesecake for Thanksgiving or Christmas in the oven for an hour or two after cooking it (and without opening the oven door!) The reason for this is if you take the cheesecake from a hot oven to a cool kitchen, it’s likely to crack on top. This won’t affect the flavour of this black bottom pumpkin cheesecake of course, but it looks better un-cracked!

How to Serve this Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe

There are various ways to present a pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate graham crust. I like to add pecan halves on top. They just go so nicely with the pumpkin flavour. Some cream cheese frosting would also work or a sprinkling of cinnamon or nutmeg. If you want to add chocolate sprinkles or another kind of decoration, go ahead. Have fun with it!

On the other hand, you might like to keep things simple. And sometimes simple is best! The toppings above are just suggestions so decorate the cheesecake (or not) however you wish.

Since this is a black bottom pumpkin cheesecake (well, technically dark brown!) it’s great for Halloween. Sporting orange and black colours, this would make a nice Halloween table centerpiece.

If you aren’t bothered about the dark and orange contrasts, you could make it using regular graham cracker crumbs. They work as perfectly as the chocolate ones but of course have a slightly different taste and flavour.

If you like this black bottom pumpkin cheesecake, you might also like Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese & Chocolate Chips, Pumpkin Spice Whipped Dalgona Coffee, or Pumpkin Pie Popsicles with Oreo Crumble.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe

An easy pumpkin dessert with pumpkin cheesecake filling is going to be a hit whatever the season or occasion. I love to make this pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate graham crust for the holidays. It’s ideal for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other day at all!