Sarah's Gingerbread Cheesecake

To be honest, y'all, I just tweaked a "regular" cheesecake recipe to suit my craving for gingerbread. So, instead of a graham cracker crust, I subbed out gingerbread cookie crumbs (I suppose you can be extremely Martha Stewart-y and make your gingerbread cookies from scratch - I used Keebler gingerbread cookies that I bought in the store. Pepperidge farm makes some too). I added a bit of extra seasoning to the filling in addition to just vanilla.

Crust:
2 cups gingerbread cookie crumbs (I used slightly more than 2 cups because I squashed too many)
1/3 cup melted butter

Filling:
3 pkgs cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c sugar
Nutmeg and ginger (to taste - I sprinkled some in until I found a nice flavor I liked but wasn't overwhelming -- you could probably use Pumpkin pie spice instead - as it has ginger and nutmeg in it)
3 eggs

What To Do:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix crumbs and butter and press firmly into bottom of 9x13 pan (You could also use a 9" springform pan - and just up the cooking time by about 25 minutes. I have horrible luck with Springform though - I always crack my cheesecake that way).

Beat Cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg and ginger with electric mixer on medium speed until blended. Then taste it. That's the fun part. If you need more spices - add more, if not, then....

Add eggs and mix just until blended (over blending puts too much air in your cheesecake. Not good).

Pour over crust.

Bake 30 minutes or until center is almost set. (Again, if you go the springform route, bake time is about 55 minutes usually).

Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.