Vegan pumpkin cheesecake made with Biscoff cookie butter swirls throughout. Easy to make, easier to eat. No nuts, coconuts, or cream cheese.

What’s better than cheesecake? PUMPKIN cheesecake! And what’s better than pumpkin cheesecake? COOKIE BUTTER PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE!!!

I don’t think I need to tell you what kind of magic a vegan pumpkin cheesecake with cookie butter is, so let’s get right to it!

The ingredients:

If you’ve made any of my other cheesecakes, you’re already going to know what’s coming. And if you’ve made them, you know it works! But if you’re new here – please just trust me. 😉

This recipe has all the same ingredients as my other cheesecakes – tofu for bulk, vegan yogurt for texture and tang, cornstarch to thicken, and sauerkraut with brine, with sugar to taste.

Yes. Sauerkraut. Pickled cabbage. Lactofermented sour brassica oleracea.

Naturally fermented sauerkraut is full of lactobacillus bacteria, which produce lactic acid as they do their thing in there. Lactic acid is one of the main flavor components in dairy cream cheese. By stealing the lactic acid from the sauerkraut, we make a really convincing cheesecake without any of the dairy!

In addition to those ingredients, we’ve added pumpkin to the party, are using coffee creamer instead of lemon juice, and adding in pumpkin pie spices. I also like to have some Biscoff cookies on standby to decorate the cheesecake with for serving.

And cookie butter, of course. 🙂

The process:

The process to make the vegan pumpkin cheesecake is exactly the same as my other cheesecakes, except for the addition of layering cookie butter into the filling.

1. Gather all the ingredients together, including your ready made crust. I highly recommend using my Biscoff cookie crust for this!
2. Put the pumpkin, tofu, yogurt, sauerkraut and brine into a blender and let it go until everything is nice and smooth. If you don’t have a high-powered blender, go ahead and use only the brine instead of cabbage pieces.

3. Mix together your creamer, cornstarch, and spices until it’s smooth with no clumps.
4. Add this mix into the blender with the fully blended pumpkin mixture.

5. Blend everything together until it’s all very smooth.
6. Pour the mixture into a medium sized saucepan. If you’re not using a high powered blender, you may want to do this through a sieve to get out any larger bits.
7. Taste test and add sugar if you need it. I usually add a few tablespoons to this recipe, but sometimes I don’t add any at all. It depends on how I’m feeling. 😉
8. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring continuously with a rubber spatula so that it doesn’t burn. Keep this up until the mixture gets chunky, then smooths out and thickens up substantially.

9. Melt your cookie butter in the microwave by heating for 10 seconds and stirring, heating for another 10 seconds and stirring again, repeating until the butter is melted and smooth.
10. Ladle half of your pumpkin mixture into your prepared crust, and smooth it out.
11. Drizzle melted cookie butter all over your layer of vegan pumpkin cheesecake filling. It doesn’t need to be pretty because it’s going to get absorbed into the cake.

12. Add the last of the cheesecake filling on top of the the cookie butter drizzle.
13. Drizzle another layer on top of the filling, generously. This will be the top of your cheesecake, so make it pretty if you want. I tried but I was also the camera person, so it came out looking a bit of a mess. My daughter told me it looks like Spiderman. Lol.
14. Chill the cheesecake for at least 4 hours before serving.
15. Adorn the cheesecake with Biscoff cookies and more cookie butter drizzle for serving, and enjoy!

How do I store the vegan pumpkin cheesecake?

Store your cheesecake in the fridge for 2-3 days. The cookie butter may begin to collect some condensation, but the quality of the cheesecake won’t diminish.

I don’t recommend freezing the cheesecake at all. It’s made with cornstarch as the thickener, and that doesn’t thaw very well. It will separate and be quite gross.

Can I make this as a pumpkin cheesecake without the cookie butter?

Absolutely! Just leave the cookie butter out, and you have an easy peasy pumpkin cheesecake. If you don’t want to use Biscoff at all, I also have a graham cracker crust and a gluten free pie crust made with cassava for base options.

What about a gluten free version?

As of right now, I don’t have a gluten free version of the cookie butter. That is definitely in development though, and I’m close! However, it’s not good enough to publish quite yet. Once I get it nailed down I’ll add it in here for sure!

Recipe: