Cheesecake Recipe

Here is the Cherry Cheesecake Recipe from our Enrichment activity:

Cheesecake  (Wanda Franklin’s version)

Crust
1 ¼ cup graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup melted butter

In 9” pie pan, stir together graham cracker crumbs and sugar until well mixed. 
Stir melted butter into crumb mixture until well mixed, then press crumbs evenly on bottom and sides of pie pan with the bowl of a spoon.
In an oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees, bake pie crust for 10 minutes.

Filling
8 oz. cream cheese
1 large egg
14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh or bottled)

After pie crust has baked for five minutes, start making filling. 
Cut cream cheese into four or more pieces and put into blender with egg, milk, and salt.
Blend until smooth.
While blender is running slowly, add lemon juice in center and blend until mixed well.  (Lemon juice starts firming up the filling, so it’s easier if you add the lemon juice just before you pour the filling into the pie crust.  If the pie crust is not done yet, you can let the mixture rest in your blender.  When the pie crust is ready, start the blender back up and add the lemon juice.)
When pie crust has finished baking, remove it from oven and turn oven down to 300 degrees.
Pour filling into baked pie crust.
Bake cheesecake in 300 degree oven for 50 minutes or until top is very lightly browned and mostly firm.
If you don’t have a blender, you can let the cream cheese soften, then use a mixer to make the filling.

Topping
1 can of any kind of pie filling or you can use any kind of fresh fruit with or without a sugar glaze or you can make your own topping, such as the following:

2 cups blueberries or pitted sour cherries (pie cherries)
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ cup fruit liquid and/or water
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring  (or ½ tsp. vanilla plus ½ tsp. almond is nice for cherries)

If using frozen blueberries or  cherries, let them thaw completely, then drain off liquid into a measuring cup.  Fresh pitted cherries may also have some cherry liquid that you can use. 
If you don’t have ¼ cup of drained liquid, add water to make ¼ cup.
If you have more than ¼ cup of drained liquid from the two cups of fruit, use all of it.
Put fruit liquid/water, sugar, and cornstarch in saucepan over medium heat and stir constantly until cornstarch starts losing some of its milky color.  Add half of fruit and continue stirring constantly but gently.  When mixture starts becoming firm, add remaining fruit and stir gently until mixture is the consistency of pie filling.  The purpose of adding the fruit by stages is so that most of the fruit will retain its shape.
After removing pie filling from stove, stir in flavoring.
Let cheesecake and topping cool to room temperature, then spread filling on cheesecake.
If some cherries are showing the side where their pit was removed, turn them over with a spoon to show their best side.
Keep refrigerated.

Note: When I freeze blueberries or cherries for pie filling, I mix 2 cups of fruit with ½ cup of sugar and freeze the mixture in individual containers.   Sugar helps the fruit freeze better.  When I cook the pie filling, I don’t add more sugar.  I just add cornstarch to the sugary liquid that drains off the fruit before I cook it.