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The gingersnap bludgeoner

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Contributed by: Gina Grate on 10/27/2006

Last night I tried my hand at a pumpkin cheesecake. I've never made cheesecake in any form, but it's one of my favorite desserts. It also seemed daunting, very complicated and way too easy to screw up. But I decided to be brave and at least give it a try. How hard can it be?

This idealism arises from the fact that I cook a lot but I almost never bake. I'm a baking virgin and have no idea of the hazards and obstacles of baking much of anything, let alone a cheesecake.

My main mistake was in thinking that when I couldn't find gingersnap crumbs at the grocery store, I would just buy a box of gingernsap cookies and crush them to make the crust. It seemed logical and simple enough.

I didn't realize that gingersnaps are like little discs of solid cement. I'm not sure how anyone chews through one of these without breaking a jaw-bone, let alone crumble it up with their hands. My fingers and thumbs still hurt today from trying that method.

After realizing that hand-crumbling them wasn't going to work, I put them into a plastic bag and laid the bag on the kitchen's linoleum floor. I went and got a pair of shoes with a hard sole and proceeded to stomp on the bag. You'd think my body weight would be enough to crush some cookies, but no. (It did however erase any concerns I might have had about my weight.)

So I laid the bag of half-crumbled cookies on the counter and went in search of a hammer. The hammer was in a box that would be too hard to reach in the closet, so I grabbed the next best thing -- a flashlight.

I don't want to know what my neighbor thought when she heard the deafening pounding sound coming from my kitchen. She could not have guessed that the crazy woman downstairs was whacking a plastic bag of gingersnaps with the blunt end of a flashlight.

It took about 5 minutes, but I managed to crush those dang gingersnaps into crumbs and dumped them into a mixing bowl.

The rest of the recipe went a lot more smoothly.

My mom was right, though, about having to adjust the baking time for this altitude. I baked it for the required 40 minutes but when I pulled it out, the center was all jiggly and the knife I inserted came out covered in the orangy liquid center. So I cooked it another 10 min., inserted the knife, cooked another 10 min., inserted theknife, etc. for about 30 additional minutes.

But all that effort was worth it. I have a beautiful pumpkin cheesecake with a gingersnap crust sitting in my refrigerator. I'll share a little bit with my fiance, but I intend to eat most of it myself -- I'm single for at least two more weeks, after all.

I'm still trying to figure out how to have fun as an adult on Halloween this year. I noticed that there's an "Erotic Fantasy Halloween Ball" but that's one I'll likely steer clear of. I look better the more clothes I'm wearing and so do most other people, in my opinion.

Several other parties look fun but cost at least $25 to get in. Too expensive.

I may end up falling back on my tradition of making more yummy seasonal stuff while watching scary movies.

The problem is that I can't stand horror movies because long after the films are over, I'm still scared. We're talking weeks.

I happened to see about 15 minutes of "The Ring" in close captioning on TV at my fitness club one night -- it was the middle of the movie, I had no idea what was going on, I couldn't hear it because you have to plug in headphones so I was just listening to the sound system's hip hop music and there were tons of people around me while I ran on the elliptical machine. It shouldn't have been scary but I slept with my lights on all over my apartment for at least two weeks afterward.

However, there are a couple of movies that I consider to be well-made and scary/suspenseful, that don't bother me after the movie is over. I might choose from some of these for Halloween night:

1. Stigmata
2. Shawn of the Dead (this one makes me laugh 'til I cry while simultaneously scaring me)
3. The Birds
4. Rear Window
5. Poltergiest (this one just made me laugh because it was so ridiculous)

The other day Itried out a new Halloween recipe in which you dip large marshmallows into warmed chocolate frosting in a saucepan, then roll the drying chocolate in fall or Halloween sprinkles. They turned out yummy! This weekend I plan to make Halloween succers with that meltable orange, white and brown candy.

Happy Halloween!

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Submitted By: Sarah Pottenger

posted on 11/1/2006 @ 3:15:24 PM

Rated Blog Entry

Ooo, you should bring some treats over here. I'll trade you cookies. You know, Andrew and I used to watch the Garfield Halloween special every year and get sooo creeped out! I can't figure it out--how can something animated be so creepy? But it was. Beware gingersnaps!

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