Instant Pot Pumpkin Cheesecake

This recipe is for Instant Pot Pumpkin Cheesecake with a gingersnap crust. It’s a great fall recipe and the perfect dessert for Thanksgiving, but you might love it so much that you make it throughout the year.

Besides loving cheesecake, we love how easy it is to make in the Instant Pot. After having success with this Instant Pot Cheesecake with graham cracker crust, we knew we’d be testing out more varieties. With the onset of fall and big dessert holidays just around the corner, we thought a pumpkin cheesecake would be fun to try. Besides, it’s the time of year when people can’t seem to get enough pumpkin! C’mon, you know you’re guilty as well, otherwise, why are you here? 🙂

This recipe is just a slightly modified from our original Instant Pot Cheesecake recipe. The 2 big differences with this recipe are that it uses pumpkin instead of sour cream and we opted for a gingersnap crust over a graham cracker crust.

Canned pumpkin can be found pretty easily in most stores year round.  However, if you can’t find it, you can try several of the tips found in this article on substitutions.  I know we have baked sweet potatoes, mashed them, and used them in recipes calling for pumpkin when I haven’t been able to find pumpkin (or ran out of my pantry extras).

The Cheesecake Crust

We decided to have a little fun and try out a gingersnap crust for this pumpkin cheesecake. It came out great and we love the flavor pairing! But, if you don’t have gingersnaps on hand or want more options…

• Check out our Instant Pot Lemon Cheesecake recipe to see how we make our graham cracker crust
• You could make a batch of our molasses sugar cookies. Cook them a couple extra minutes so that they are crispy rather than chewy. Then, use some for the crust and save some for eating! 🙂
• Use one of your own favorite crust recipes.
• Get creative and try something new.
• Be bold and go crustless. Although we can’t fully endorse this option, only because we love the crust. 🙂

Additional Instant Pot Cheesecake Tips

• Make sure your cream cheese is room temperature so that there are no lumps when you mix up the ingredients.
• Consider using a trivet with handles (or something equivalent) inside the Instant Pot.  This makes it easier to slowly lower the full springform pan of cheesecake into the pot.  If you have just a rack with no handles, you can also just use a piece of foil somewhat like a sling to carefully lower the cheesecake into the pot.
• Let the Instant Pot fully naturally release before opening (probably takes about 15 minutes).  Don’t worry if there is a small amount of liquid on the top of your cheesecake when you open the lid.  It will absorb as it cools, or just use a paper towel and dab some of it off.
• For the optimal eating experience, we’ve found that this pumpkin cheesecake tastes best after about 1-2 days of chilling in the fridge. I know, it’s hard to wait! But it does make it the perfect make-ahead dessert for Thanksgiving dessert. And that will free up your Instant Pot on Thanksgiving for these Instant Pot mashed potatoes or this Instant Pot Pumpkin Risotto!
• Consider topping with whipped cream and/or caramel sauce!
• For this recipe, we found that a 7-inch springform pan fit perfectly in our pot. You may have to experiment slightly with cook times depending on the size of your Instant Pot and the size of the pan you end up using.