Thursday, April 09, 2009

Strawberry Cheesecake

I brought a strawberry cheesecake to the Passover seder last night. Originally, it was going to be key lime, but then I couldn't find the recipe I wanted, so I switched to the Barefoot Contessa's raspberry cheesecake. But then I couldn't find any raspberries in the stores, so I switched to strawberry and played around with the recipe. You can't use flour during Passover, so I made my own crust using ground almonds, matzoh, fresh ginger and other good things. Turned out pretty well, I think. For the cheesecake part, I used less sugar, about a quarter of the lemon zest, low-fat sour cream, and neufchatel cheese instead of full-fat cream cheese, and I switched around the topping too, because I didn't want the berries to get smushed using Ina's method. Oh, and I used a larger (10.5-inch) springform pan, as there's no way a nine-inch pan would have worked for all that filling. I served this with chocolate dipped strawberries and lightly sweetened whipped cream.

6 comments:

Ali said...
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Ali said...

looks wonderful!

J. said...

It looks so delicious I want to bite my hand off!!!

Kt said...

Thanks Ali and JJ! :)

Cate said...

This looks spectacular! I keep telling myself that sometime soon I'll try baking my own cheesecake, but it's so intimidating!

Kt said...

Thanks Cate! Definitely try making cheesecake -- they're surprisingly easy to make.

A few things to keep in mind:

Use a waterbath to prevent cracking, but also wrap the springform pan in aluminum foil (to keep out any water from the waterbath) and then, when the cake has been out of the oven for about 15 min., run a butter knife around the edges of the pan, to loosen the cheesecake and keep it from pulling as it chills and contracts.

Don't worry if it does crack, though -- add some whipped cream and/or fruit and no one will know.

Don't overbake the cheesecake. It should be slightly jiggly in the middle when you take it out of the oven. The cake will continue cooking a little, and it will set up just fine when it's chilled. :)