Love and Cheesecake

Happy Valentine's Day!  Instead of making reservations to go out to eat somewhere, we decided to stay home and make a tasty meal ourselves.  For our Valentine's dinner we had ribeye steaks, baked potatoes, green beans, cheesy flatbread, and cheesecake for dessert.

I haven't made a cheesecake in a long while, so I searched online for a recipe to use and found one for Sour Cream Cheesecake from Cooking Light that I adapted.

To make the crust, I used my trusty Magic Bullet to mix up the melted butter, sugar and graham crackers.  Then I mushed them into the bottom and a little bit up the sides of a springform pan.  I used an 8" pan instead of the 9" that was recommended, mostly because my 9" pan is bent, but also because it will make a thicker cheesecake.

This recipe calls for cottage cheese and also says you should mix the whole thing up in a food processor.  I don't have a food processor, but I figured as long as I blended up the cottage cheese so there weren't any chunks, the rest could be mixed with a regular mixer.

 See how creamy the cottage cheese turns out?

Then beat in the vanilla, cream cheese, eggs and sugar.  Looks yummy already.

Then it gets poured into the springform pan.  I put the springform into a larger cake pan and poured some water into the cake pan prevent cracks.  You can find more tips on baking cheesecakes from Diana's Desserts.

I forgot to take a picture of the cheesecake when I took it out of the oven, before the sour cream topping was added.  But here it is before I spread the topping.  You can see the texture of the cheesecake on the edges.  In the middle it was still wet looking and the whole thing shook some when I jiggled it.  (But since I baked it an extra 10 minutes, I assumed it must be ready).

Raise the temperature on the oven to 450.  After spreading the sour cream mixture to the edges, return the cheesecake to the oven and set the time for five minutes.  When five minutes have passed, turn off the oven and crack the oven door open with an oven mitt and let it sit in there for about 20-30 minutes.

When mine came out it looked like this.

After you run a knife around the edge and take of the sides of the pan, it's even yummier looking.  It's always hardest to wait through the cooling and chilling part of making a cheesecake.  Let the cheesecake cool and then chill it for about 8 hours before serving.

After it chills overnight, I made a strawberry sauce to put on top with some frozen strawberries I had on hand.  To make the topping, defrost the berries, mash them up, add some sugar and pour over the top of the cheesecake.  Then slice it up and enjoy.  Yummy!

Crust:
1  cup cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons sugar
2  tablespoons  butter or stick margarine, melted
Cooking spray

Filling:
1  cup  2% low-fat cottage cheese
1  tablespoons  vanilla extract
1/2  teaspoon  salt
1  (8-ounce) block 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
1  (8-ounce) block fat-free cream cheese, at room temperature
3  large eggs
1  cup  sugar

Sour Cream Topping:
3  tablespoons  sugar
1  teaspoon  vanilla extract
1  (8-ounce) carton low-fat sour cream


Strawberry Topping:
1 cup mashed strawberries
2 tablespoons sugar


Preheat oven to 350°.

To prepare the crust, combine the first 3 ingredients in a bowl. Firmly press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of an 8-inch springform pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes, and cool the crust on a wire rack.

To prepare filling, puree the cottage cheese until smooth.  Combine the cottage cheese, 1 tablespoon vanilla, salt, and cream cheeses until smooth. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing after each addition. Add 1 cup sugar; mix just until blended.

Pour the cheese mixture into the prepared crust, and bake at 350° for 60 minutes or until the cheesecake is almost set. Remove the cheesecake from oven, and let stand 10 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 450°.
To prepare sour cream topping, combine 3 tablespoons sugar and the remaining ingredients. Spread evenly over cheesecake. Bake cheesecake at 450° for 5 minutes then turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake in the oven for about 20-30 minutes to cool slowly. Cool completely on wire rack. Cover and chill 8 hours.

To prepare the strawberry topping, mash 1 cup of strawberries (either fresh or frozen).  Add 2 tablespoons sugar and mix well to dissolve the sugar.  Spread over the top of the cheesecake.