How to make cheesecake right

You have to allow the cream cheese to come to room temp but not too warm (soup). Apparently your cream cheese was still too cold. Or it wasn't mixed well enough (but not to the point where you whip too much air into it).

Here are some hints:

http://rouxbe.com/recipes/112-spiced-pumpkin-cheesecake/text

Notes

"When making the filling, it is important to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Mix the cream cheese just until there are no lumps. If you try to cheat and use cold cream cheese, you will wind up incorporating too much air by over-beating it. This may form unattractive air bubbles on the surface of your cake. Once the eggs are added, mix just until combined. Again, don’t over-beat the mixture and incorporate too much air. Excess air could make the cheesecake fall during baking. If you do wind up with lumpy batter, press the mixture through a sieve to obtain a smoother batter, rather than over-beating it."

Thanks, but I will say it takes a very, very long time for cream cheese to get soft. I will probably let it sit out all day in the sunny window next time.

That's not a good idea, it is still a dairy product. Letting it sit in a sunny window all day is just asking for problems.

Here are a bunch of tips for quickly softening cheese cake for baking.

I'll list some of the best here, you can click the link to read the rest:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/343629

*cooks illustrated recommends wrapping the cream cheese or butter in plastic wrap, then submerging it in a bowl of hot tap water for 5-10 min.

*I take it out of the metal wrapping and microwave for 20 seconds for cream cheese.

*I usually cut it up into small cubes, spread out on a plate and let it sit for 10 minutes at room temp...you have softened little cubes of butter or cream cheese pretty quickly.