Quarantine Cheesecake!

Everything but the kitchen sink Cheesecake...a little bit of this and a little bit of that, ingredients are running low but put together creatively and with fingers crossed, they made a fabulous cheesecake!

My kids prefer ricotta cheesecakes to pure cream cheese cheesecakes. But going out to get ingredients right now is not only dangerous but also many times futile, as the store shelves are pretty bare. But in my fridge I had a bunch of bits and pieces, and odds and ends, so I decided to give making cheesecake a try. The results were fabulous!

Crust Ingredients:

2 cups Graham cracker crumbs

1 stick of unsalted butter, melted

1 cup of ground pecans (optional)

Crust Instructions:

1. In a medium size bowl mix together all the crust ingredients. If not using pecans just increase the graham cracker crumbs.

2. Press crumb mixture onto the bottom and about an inch or so up the sides of a 9 inch springform cake pan. 3. Set aside as you make the filling

Cheesecake Ingredients:

2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese. I only had low fat cream cheese and it worked really well.

16 ounces of Ricotta (I used whole milk ricotta)

1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 stick of unsalted butter softened

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 tablespoons lemon juice

3 tablespoons of corn starch

3 tablespoons of AP flour

1 teaspoon of salt

16 ounces of sour cream (I used 1 cup of low-fat sour cream and 1 cup of homemade creme fraiche)

1 can of pie filling for the top of the baked cheesecake. I used raspberry pie filling but cherry, peach, strawberry etc would be great).

Instructions for Cheesecake:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large bowl blend the cream cheese and ricotta together until fairly smooth.

3. Add the sugar and mix in.

4. Add the eggs, mixing well between each one.

5. Add the butter and the sour cream and mix thoroughly.

6. Add the lemon juice, vanilla, salt, corn starch and flour, and blend in well until there are no lumps.

7. Pour the cheesecake mixture over the crust in the springform pan carefully.

8. Wrap the bottom and sides of the springform in foil or place springform on a baking sheet in case the pan leaks.

9. Bake the cheesecake at 375 for 1 hour, then turn off the heat and leave in the oven for another hour.

10. Because of the combo of ingredients I used the top browned quite a bit and sometimes cheesecakes crack, mine did. Take the cheesecake out of the oven and cool completely and refrigerate for at least 6 hours but ideally overnight .

11. Once the cheesecake is fully cool, cover the top and any cracks with your chosen pie filling. The raspberry pie filling is amazing! This cheesecake wasn’t heavy and made for an amazing quarantine dessert.

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