Cheesecake….. this one is light & fluffy!

So many cheesecake recipes… I won’t be trying them all :)) but this recipe looked so delicious I had to make it! The next one I am going to try .. .I am going to replace the cream cheese with homemade Labneh… if it works I will blog it!

The recipe is from The Nosher just called Cheesecake

The egg whites are beaten then folded into the cream cheese mixture.. making the texture of this cheesecake light & fluffy.

I doubled the graham wafer crust because I love a thick crust.. & replaced the sour cream with plain greek yugurt

***It is in the oven now as I am writing this blog & some of the filling leaked out of the bottom of the pan, which means I did not put the pan together properly, so my advise is….. check your pan!!! It does smell good though,, drips cooking at the bottom of my oven….!!!!

This cheesecake bakes for 1 hour, sits in the warm oven for 1 hour & then sits in the oven with the oven door ajar for 30 minutes… so make sure you have lots of time to make this!

( I wanted to make a no-bake strawberry cheesecake, but Murray likes a regular cheesecake so I made this for him…another time I am going to try the other recipe!)

NOTE: this tasted delicious but I had a few problems with it… first one is that I did not mix the filling enough. The cream cheese was not completely smooth so when we bite into some parts of the cheesecake we get a bit of cream cheese…not good…. so my suggestion would be…mix the cheese cake filling in your food processor, scrape down the sides often so that all of the cream cheese gets smooth. OR, make sure that you continue mixing the ingredients in your mixer, scraping the bottom & sides of the mixing bowl often to smooth out any lumps of cream cheese… of course we are still eating this because it tastes great!

Here is the recipe with my changes

Ingredients

For the Crust

2 cups graham wafer crumbs

12 tbs melted butter

For the Cheesecake Filling

6 eggs, separated *** set aside

1 lb ( 2-227 g boxes) of cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 lb (453 g) plain greek yoghurt

2 tbsp flour

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp vanilla

Method

Preheat oven to 300 f

one 9 inch springform pan

For the Crust

1. Mix the graham wafer crumbs & the melted butter together until throughly mixed
2. Press firmly into the bottom of the springform pan
3. Set aside

For the Filling

***I like to beat my egg whites before the filling is mixed. This way, I beat the egg whites, set them aside in another bowl & then mix the filling right in the same bowl. If you mix the filling first, put the filling into a bowl big enough to fold the beaten egg whites in … then wash the bowl, put the whisk blade on the mixer & mix the filling. Alternately, mix the filling in the food processor & beat the whites in the mixer– Beat the egg whites until stiff in the bowl of your mixer using the whisk attachment. In the bowl of your food processor, mix the filling ingredients until smooth, then put this into a bowl, fold in the beaten egg whites

Method for using a mixer only

1. Beat the egg whites in the bowl of your mixer with the whisk attachment until stiff. Very gently put these into a bowl & set aside
2. Now mix the cream cheese until smooth, scraping down the sides often & the bottom of the bowl
3. Add the eggs yokes, sugar, greek yoghurt, flour, juice of 1/2 lemon & vanilla to the cream cheese & beat well until the mixture is really smooth. Scrape the sides & bottom of the bowl often
4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the cream cheese mixture *** I used the lowest speed on my mixer to do this but I did it just until they were folded in
5. Gently pour the cream cheese mixture into the prepared crust
6. Bake for 1 hour then turn the oven off & let sit in the oven for another hour
7. Now you will let the cheesecake sit in the oven to cool with with door ajar *** TIP my friend told me to pull the oven rack out & using a knife, cut around the edges of the cheesecake, put back in the oven with the door ajar. This allows the cheesecake to cool without cracking I DID NOT TRY THIS BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME AFTER, BUT IT MAKES SENSE TO ME SO TRY IT!!!

Chill the cheesecake before serving

Enjoy!