Cheesecake is believed to have originated in ancient Greece. Historians believe that cheesecake was served to the athletes during the first Olympic Games held in 776 B.C. However, cheese making can be traced back as far as 2,000 B.C., anthropologists have found cheese molds dating back to that period.

Alan Davidson, author of the Oxford Companion to Food, wrote that, “cheesecake was mentioned in Marcus Porcius Cato’s De re Rustica around 200 BCE and that Cato described making his cheese libum (cake) with results very similar to modern cheesecake.”

The Romans spread cheesecake from Greece to across Europe. Centuries later cheesecake appeared in America, the recipes brought over by immigrants.

Here’s a yummy Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe:

What You Need

18 PEEK FREANS Ginger Crisps (1 sleeve), crushed

1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

1/4 cup butter, melted

3 pkg. (250 g each) PHILADELPHIA Brick Cream Cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar, divided

1 tsp. vanilla

3 eggs

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

Make It

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine cookie crumbs, pecans and butter. Press onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan.

Beat cream cheese, 1/2 cup of the sugar and vanilla with electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until blended. Remove 1 cup plain batter; place in small bowl.

Stir remaining 1/4 cup sugar, pumpkin and spices into remaining batter. Spoon pumpkin batter into crust; top with spoonfuls of reserved plain batter. Cut through batters with knife several times for marble effect.

Bake 45 min. or until centre is almost set. Cool completely. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Cut into 12 slices. Store leftover cheesecake in refrigerator.

Here’s another great recipe for Halloween. These little Skeleton Cupcakes are more difficult to make than the Boo Cups, but they are much much tastier.

What You Need

1 box (18.25 oz) devil’s food cake mix

1 1/2 cups lowfat buttermilk

3 large eggs

1/4 cup canola oil

2 cans (16 oz each) dark chocolate frosting

DECORATION: black gel or paste food color, 24 marshmallows, 24 (4-in.) thin breadsticks (grissini) or lollipop sticks, a clean artist’s brush, 24 grape fruit leather snacks (like FruitaBu), black decorating sugar, red nonpareil candies

Make It

HEAT oven to 350°F. You’ll need 24 regular-size muffin cups lined with paper, foil or Halloween-themed liners.

BEAT cake mix, buttermilk, eggs and oil in large bowl with mixer on medium speed 2 minutes or until just blended. Divide batter between muffin cups (1/4 cup batter per cup).

BAKE 24 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack 15 minutes before removing cupcakes to rack to cool completely.

TINT chocolate frosting black with food color; frost cupcakes.

DECORATE: Slightly flatten marshmallows with palm of your hand. Insert a broken length of breadstick or lollipop stick into each marshmallow. Place some black frosting in a microwave-safe custard cup and microwave about 5 seconds, until thin and runny. Paint skeleton faces onto marshmallows with a fine paintbrush.

USING the photo as a guide, cut fruit leather into bat wings with scissors; press in decorating sugar to coat. Roll fruit leather scraps into small balls, then shape into bat heads with ears; coat heads in sugar. Attach 2 nonpareil candies for eyes with a dab of frosting.

ASSEMBLE: Using photo as guide, stand bat wings upright in frosting on top of cupcakes. Insert a skeleton head behind wings into middle of cupcake. Attach a bat head in middle of wings with frosting.

Halloween is such a wonderful and magical time of year, but we all know that the best part of Halloween is the candy. Halloween is by far the sweetest holiday of the year; literally. It beats Easter, Valentine’s day and Christmas with it’s candy sales, in fact, one quarter of all candy purchased each year is bought around the Halloween season.

One of the most, if not the most popular Halloween candy is candy corn; roughly 20 000 000 lbs of candy corn is sold each year. That means if you took all the candy corn sold and laid it end to end, it would circle the earth a whopping 4 times.

In the spirit of Halloween candy and treats, I found this really great idea for something that could be done with your children, or for any Halloween get together. They are fun, really simple and take almost no time, and the bonus? No baking!

What You Need

3-1/2 cups cold milk

2 pkg.  (4-serving size each) JELL-O Chocolate Instant Pudding

2-1/2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, divided

1 cup  OREO Baking Crumbs, divided

84 orange jelly beans or smarties(about 1 cup)

28   BAKER’S Miniature Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

28 small Halloween candies

Make It

BEAT milk and pudding mix with whisk 2 min. Gently stir in 1-1/2 cups Cool Whip and 1/2 cup baking crumbs. Let stand 5 min.

SPOON 2 Tbsp. pudding mixture into each of 14 (7-oz.) plastic cups. Top each with layers of 1/2 tsp. baking crumbs and 6 jelly beans or smarties. Cover evenly with remaining pudding mixture; top with remaining baking crumbs.

DROP remaining Cool Whip by spoonfuls onto desserts to resemble ghosts. Add 2 chocolate chips to each for the eyes. Decorate with candies as desired. Cover and refrigerate leftovers .

Shortcut

Instead of spooning remaining Cool Whip onto desserts for the ghosts, use a resealable plastic bag to form the ghosts. Just spoon the Cool Whip into resealable plastic bag. Cut off one corner from bottom of bag, then squeeze Cool Whip from bottom of bag to create the ghosts.

Variation

Instead of topping each dessert with a ghost, top each with a tombstone. Prepare desserts, omitting the remaining 1 cup Cool Whip and the chocolate chips. Decorate 14 Social Tea Biscuits with icing gel to resemble tombstones. Then, insert one in top of each dessert just before serving.