Cherry Cheesecake

This past thanksgiving I tried my first attempt to make cherry cheesecake. While it turned out pretty good I have been dying to try it again!

 Below is the ingredients needed:

Ingredients:
Vegetable cooking spray
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 (21-ounce) can cherry pie filling
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg whites
1 egg
1/3 cup bottled lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup unsifted flour

Now before I start baking I start my over too 300F. This is always the first step because if I do not turn the oven on at the very beginning then I will end up forgetting that step! First I have to find my spring foam pan. If you have never used a spring foam pan before you are in for a treat! This has got to be the trickiest pan I have ever used. You must get the bottom part of the pan in perfectly before you can close to edge of the pan. The next step is spraying the pan with cooking spray. I have a flour based spray that I live by. I am a messy baking so I have to make sure that I spray over my sink away from everything else.

This recipe calls from just 1/4 cup of graham cracker crumbs. I prefer to melt some butter and then mix it in with the cracker crumbs before filling the bottom and side of the pans. The butter mixed in with the cracker crumbs makes a very gooey feeling and it will stick to your fingers. If this happens add a little flour to your fingers and it will help!

After I finished the crust and side the next step is to take the cheery pie filling and pour it into a bowl. This looks very funny. It is red and clumpy. As I pick up the electric blender to mix the filling until smooth I can almost smell the cherries!! This has to be very smooth otherwise it will mess up the cheesecake.

After finding a different mixing bowl I add the 2 packages of cream cheese. The lesson I learned the wrong way with cream cheese is making sure it is room temperature BEFORE trying to mix it up. I take the same blender I used to mix the cherry pie filling (after wiping it off) and slowly mix the cream cheese. It starts to look like clumpy old milk but slowly it will get smooth. I have to do this until it gets nice and fluffy like a pillow :). Once it is smooth I then take the can of sweetened condensed milk and pour it in the bowl with the fluffy cream cheese. Condensed milk is very slimy and it takes a little bit to get the contents of the whole can in the bowl. Next comes the eggs! I add the egg whites to the bowl. To get just the egg whites I crack the egg over the bowl that has the cream cheese in it and the slowly toggle the yolk from one half of the shell to the other until the only thing left in the egg shell is the york.  After the eggs comes the lemon and the vanilla. One of my favorite smells it the smells that comes from vanilla. As I open the bottle it takes me back to the first time I ever baked as a child! After everything in this bowl is mixed just right I then stir in the flour. I want to make sure it is mixed well but not too well.

Next I take a step back and look at what I have, other then a very messy kitchen. I have two bowls. One contains my smooth red cherry pie filling and the other contains the white creamy filling. I grab the pre-sprayed pan next to my sink and add half of the white creamy filling in the pan. I use a spatula to get it nice an smooth. I then take about 1/2 a cup of the cherry filling and add it to the pan. Then I take the rest of the white creamy filling left in the bowl and pour it on of the cherry filling. This makes a layer of cheesecake that taste AMAZING! The final part is my favorite. I take a spoon and drop spoonfuls of cherry filling on top of the creamy batter. I do this all over so it makes a nice pretty red color. Then I take a knife and slowly swirl around the cheery filling on top of the cheesecake to make a pretty design. Lesson learned the hard way...do not dig too deep while make the pretty design or else you will have cut into the cheesecake and it will not turn out as pretty after it is cooked.

So now that I have prepared my pan and made a disaster of my kitchen I now open my oven and place the pan in my hot oven. It takes about an hour to be done. The wait is not to bad at first especially because I am busy cleaning up the random parts of egg, cheesecake or butter that spilled as I was cooking. After cleaning comes the hard part of waiting. I can start to smell the cherry baking. Once the timer goes off I open the stove and a strong smell of warm cherry cheesecakes comes out of the oven and fills up the whole house! Within seconds the entire family is in the kitchen asking if it is done yet. I use a toothpick and poke around the center of the cheesecake and double check that it is done. The best feeling is when i put the toothpick in the cheesecake and take it out and there is nothing on it! Yay for cheesecake being done on the first try!

I prefer
to let my cheesecake cool for a little bit before serving. After it is chilled and ready to eat this is the outcome:

Final Post

Today is the final day of my blogging assignment for my Composition class.  Other than posting things here and there on Facebook I have never been one to blog. I always thought of blogging as something "creative" people do or something that stay at home moms do. Having an assignment to blog everyday seemed a little challenging but I figured it should not be too hard.  When I first started to blog my biggest struggle was remembering to blog! Many times I would be relaxing on the couch and about to put on a movie then realized I still had to blog for the day. Then I had to figure out what to blog about. What was considered a good blog? I was more worried about what other would think of my blog entries then anything else. After doing some research and and completing a couple blog post I realized that the blog was for me more then for others. This was a place where I could post about whatever was on my mind without judgment. The only people that would read my blog would be classmates and occasionally my husband peeking over my shoulder as I was blogging. The main thing I did not like about blogging had to do with the class project. I really wanted to read other peoples blog but the list of blog was never made available like it was supposed to be. This made the task of finding other classmates blogs very difficult. My post were about a lot of random things, I blogged about whatever was on my mind at that moment. I found this to be the easiest way to blog. Throughout the blog I found it easier and easier to put down in words what was going on in my head. I used the free-writing technique I learned about in class. A few times I made myself laugh as I was writing down the things that came to my head, my brain tends to work in a funny way. As a writer I have also changed by the way my words flow together. I have had issues in the past trying to write something in a clear way and now I feel like I am able to do that fairly easy.  Now that the blog assignment is done as of today I am not sure if I will continue to blog like I am now. As I was doing research on blogs I saw a lot of food and baking blogs. I am a HUGE fan of baking and am thinking about turning this blog into a baking blog. I would be to working on my writing and do something I love at the same time!