An Awesome Little Cheesecake Recipe

We celebrate quite a few birthdays in January. Who knew it would be such a popular month for birthdays amongst our family and our friends! This year we went small for Liv’s 5th and Marley’s 1st birthday with a park date. I brought art supplies, laid out a big dropcloth and Liv’s friends painted flat canvases (we passed out aprons as favors) before playing on the swingset and running around. No homemade cake, dessert table, coordinated colors… it was just all about playing. And for this year, that’s okay :).

This past weekend we celebrated my mom’s birthday and I brought a little cheesecake to the family party. I wanted to share the recipe with you because my messing-around-in-the-kitchen when it comes to cheesecake has actually worked out pretty really well. I really try to share only recipes that I think are da bomb and I’m excited to share this one.

A DELICIOUS CHEESECAKE RECIPE

Makes 1 shallow 10″ cheesecake

Crust:
1 cup (or roughly 12 large graham crackers) graham cracker crumbs
3 tb sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla
4 tb melted butter

Filling:
16 oz (2 packages) Neufchatel cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
6 tb sugar
2 tsp flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup white chocolate chips (secret weapon)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

To make graham cracker crumbs, I pile crackers into a gallon plastic bag and roll a heavy rolling pin back and forth. I like some chunks and I tend to always use a favorite graham cracker brand. The crust is definitely a huge part of the deliciousness for me. I like to add a little sugar as well. After moving the crumbs from gallon bag to a mixing bowl, stir in melted butter and vanilla. It’s cool to be generous with the melted butter if 4 tb isn’t enough. Mix well.

Generously cover the inside of a spring form pan with butter and press graham cracker mix into the bottom (optional is to also line the bottom of pan with parchment paper). Bake for 7 minutes.

In a mixer, combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. Mix until well combined. Stir in eggs, sour cream, flour and white chocolate chips (this is the sweet secret!).

Bake at 300 degrees for 40-45 minutes. Allow to sit until cool.

When completely cool, slide a knife around the edge of the cheesecake before popping the spring form pan open

I am ALL about the caramelized crust which is why my proportions result in roughly a 50/50 cake. Plus for a family dinner a shallow, smaller cheesecake is perfect. You could double the filling proportions for a thicker, higher cheesecake as well.

There you have it, a really awesome little cheesecake recipe. Happy birthday, mom. Love you!