When is Dinner

Nick has been asking me to make a New York Style Cherry Cheesecake for weeks, since I first made a Sopapilla Cheesecake for our friend Sean’s birthday. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been too intimidated to make Cheesecake. I finally gave in and started searching for recipes. The one that sounded best to me was over at  Honey and Butter. It looked easy enough to do, and she said no cracks, no water bath, special wrapping, etc, which I was really trying to avoid. I don’t really care for Graham Crackers (y’all know I am picky), so I thought I’d swap it out for Nilla wafers, because I’ve used those before for pie recipes and it turned out ok. I made my list and headed to the store to get the ingredients.

For the crust, I needed Nilla Wafers, Sugar, and Butter. The original recipe called for a cup of graham crackers, 3tbsp sugar, and 3tbsp butter. I used my Pampered Chef Chopper (Circa 1998 and still chopping!) and crushed them into itty bitty pieces, then mixed with the melted butter and sugar.

I pressed it into the bottom of my pan (13×9), but it just wasn’t covering everything good. In the photo below, you can see some bare spots and it was very, very thin.

So, I decided to double the crust ingredients and use 2 cups Crushed Nilla Wafers, 6tbsp melted butter, and 6tbsp sugar.

Doesn’t that look better? I realized the first picture was all orange-y and it was too late to re-take, so I moved the pan across the kitchen to try and get a better shot It’s not too thick as you can see from the finished product picture up top, but it definitely needed a doubling of the ingredients. Go ahead and pop this in the oven (pre-heated to 325) for 10 minutes.

Now for the fun part. The cheesecake part. That is FIVE packages of Philadelphia Cream Cheese. This is my first one, so I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but it seemed like A LOT when I was mixing it I also needed a cup of sugar, 3tbsp flour (it didn’t say self rising or all purpose, but self rising is what I had on hand, so that’s what I used and it turned out just fine), 1 tbsp vanilla extract, 1 cup sour cream, and 4 eggs at room temp.

Before you begin to mix, you want to make sure your cream cheese is nice and soft. If you’ve ever used a mixed in cream cheese that isn’t soft, you’ll know it’s a headache. I used the microwave to make sure mine was nice and soft then put it in my bowl and began mixing it on low. Once it was mixing nicely, I paused and added in my sugar, vanilla, sour cream.

My stand mixer was broken in the move, so I am using a hand mixer. Once that was nice and creamy, I had to get Nick to come assist me. The eggs need to be added one at a time and folded in. Since I don’t have a third arm, and I needed one arm to mix, and one to turn the bowl, I had to have him add the eggs. He now sees that I do need a stand mixer

Once it was all nice and smooth, it was time to pour it into the pan on top of the Nilla Wafer Crust.

I completely forgot to get a picture of that shot. Once it was baking, Nick asked if I took it, but it was too late at that point. This is a shot of it fresh out of the oven. It needs to cool completely, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. I let mine sit in the fridge for 5 hours and we had it for dessert. It was delish, but still not good and firm. It was MUCH better the next day after it had been in the fridge overnight. I didn’t do anything fancy with it, just left it in the pan (with these guys it was GONE the next day anyway). I added the cherry pie filling on each slice as I served it, and kept the remainder in a tupperware container in the fridge between servings. A picture of one of the slices is at the top of the post.

This recipe was shared at What’s Cooking Wednesday. If you have a recipe post you’d like to share, be sure to head over and join the linky!

This recipe is partying at:

• F It Friday
• Melt in your Mouth Monday
• Sundae Scoop
• Sweet Sharing Monday
• Wonderful Food Wednesday