Pumpkin Cream Pie

Everything  I made at Thanksgiving was a known recipe except for dessert (and the turkey, but I've already talked about that).  Thanksgiving is a time for either pecan pie or pumpkin pie.  Your family may have other traditions, but those are the ones I equate with T-day.  I'm a pecan pie girl.  Jason's not a fan, and I wasn't going to make a whole corn syrup pie (let's face it, it's mostly corn syrup, not pecans) just for me.  I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie, but I do like pumpkin-flavored stuff.  So I looked for a recipe for no-bake pumpkin cheesecake.  This is what I made:

Ingredients:

8 oz cream cheese or Neufchatel

1/4 cup each sugar and brown sugar

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 tsp each vanilla, cinnamon, ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

8 oz thawed Cool Whip

9" graham cracker pie crust

pretty basic ingredients (cream cheese and pie crust not pictured)

Steps:
Cream together the cream cheese and the sugars.  Stir in the pumpkin puree and the spices/vanilla.  Fold in the Cool Whip.  Spread into the crust and chill for two hours before serving.

It was super easy to put together.  The best part?  Licking the spatula!

The final product was tasty and light, the perfect 4:00 snack with coffee after eating a big heavy meal for lunch.

I may tweak the recipe in the future, but it was actually quite tasty.  The only problem I had with it was the name -- pumpkin cheesecake.  The texture wasn't cheesecakey at all!  The Cool Whip makes it light and fluffy, not dense and cheesy.  Once I got past the name, I could actually enjoy the pie, so I'm now calling it Pumpkin Cream Pie.  Problem solved!