My family absolutely LOVES cheesecakes and they are one of the easiest and most delectable things you can make! Now, I have never made a pumpkin cheesecake until tonight. I thought I would practice it before I presented it to my family at Thanksgiving. It tastes amazing! I will not be shunned for not making the usual pumpkin pie it is that good!
    I snuck a bit more nutmeg and cinnamon into mine. I love these spices so I added about 1/3tsp of each. We also like to refrigerate ours before we eat it. OH! a good thing to have around is those small pie crusts (or tins if you make your own crust)! That way if you have any extras you can have a mini cheesecake all to yourself (shhhhhhhh!) ;)
     Of course you can make your own cream cheese and pie crust for this recipe and I encourage it! I just didn't have the time or patience tonight to wait any longer :) BTW I will post recipes for homemade cream cheese and a wonderful ginger snap pie crust recipe in the future!

Ingredients:

1 prepared pie shell (I prefer graham cracker or ginger snap)
1 8oz block of cream cheese
1c sugar
2 eggs
1c cooked pumpkin (can or roasted and pureed)
1/3c flour
1/2tsp nutmeg
1/2tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix cream cheese, eggs, and sugar until smooth.
3. Add pumpkin, flour, nutmeg, and cinnamon and mix together well.
4. Pour into a prepared pie shell and bake for 45 minutes depending on your oven.
5. Allow to cool completely before you serve.

Let me start of by saying that you can use rabbit meat almost any way you use chicken. Rabbit, as well as chicken, takes on the flavor of whatever you are cooking. Keep this in mind as you are marinating.

This recipe is a simple recipe to get started and helps give you an idea of how to use rabbit within your comfort zone.

Roasted Rosemary Rabbit and Potatoes
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons rosemary leaves, finely crushed
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon minced, dried garlic
6 hindquarters, back legs rabbit (about 2 pounds)
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes, cut into 1in cubes


1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Mix oil, paprika, rosemary, salt, pepper and minced, dried garlic in large bowl. Add rabbit and let it marinade while you wash and cut up your potatoes. Add potatoes; toss to coat well. Arrange potatoes in single layer on foil-lined 9x13-inch baking pan. Cover with foil tightly.

2. Bake 20 minutes. Take out of the oven, remove foil and stir it around a bit.

3. Bake 10 to 15 minutes longer without the foil until rabbit is cooked through and potatoes are tender, stirring potatoes occasionally to prevent them from sticking.

We are a small 24 hole rabbitry in Northeastern Louisiana. We currently raise pedigreed New Zealands and pedigreed Mini Rex. We supply pet and show quality rabbits in our area. Our focus is on quality so we will not be expanding much any time soon. We do sell meat breed babies for consumption at times. Very few will be for sale since they are the reason we started. We will sell meat breed babies for stock from time to time. Just check our nestbox pages and for sale page.

How we started:
We started with two NZ whites to raise for meat. From there we just added what meat type rabbit was available to us. We stumbled onto mini rex while looking for standard rex in our area and were unsuccessful in finding any. We went to one show and were immediately hooked, so now our rabbitry is mainly pedigreed mini rex.

We have since sold all of our mixed breeds except 2 does. We have also expanded our 16 hole rabbitry to a 24 hole rabbitry with a meat grow out run. We now only have 14 rabbits but we are striving for quality! We will cull VERY hard to get a good established brood line.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.