• Category: Desserts
• Tuesday, 24 March 2009 17:44

For a week now I have been meaning to make cheesecake. Finally today was the day. It was exactly what I needed...

There was only one reason I hadn't made the cheesecake yet. I didn't have the right pan for it. So, I gave in to my stomach's desire and decided to try making it a different way.

 Place all of the graham crackers into a food processor and add 2 tablespoons of sugar. Turn on the processor and pulverize.  Pour in melted butter and pulse and process until all combined.

The crumbs will look like this. All buttery and ready to press into my ramekins.

Divide the crumbs equally into the ramkins and press down.

I grabbed a half pint jar and squished the crumbs down and pressed them up the sides.

As you can see the crust didn't make it all the way up the sides, but I really don't think it is going to matter. I am not taking the cheesecakes out of the ramekins. They will be eaten from the ramekins. Just as long as I get to eat some cheesecake, that is all that matters to me...

Open up all three of the packages of cream cheese. It should be softened so that there wont be any lumps. But cream cheese isn't that hard to soften. I didn't wait to long. Maybe 10 minutes.

Pour in 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour...

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and then set the mixer on medium to combine all of the ingredients.

After a few minutes it should look pretty well combined. Add 1/4 cup of milk and mix again.

Then take the three beaten eggs and add them to the cream cheese mixture. Mix in until it has a nice smooth consistency.

I finished mixing in the eggs by hand and then it was ready to be put into the ramekins. The mixture is pretty thick, not really pourable. I decided to grab a medium sized scooper.

I filled each ramekin with two scoops of the cream cheese mixture. And I mean healthy scoops.

Now  the little cheesecakes are ready to bake. I preheated the oven to 375 degrees. I placed the ramekins in a glass baking dish filled half way with water. The water bath will help keep them from drying out or becoming discolored. The cracking for me just can't be helped. It is going to happen...

When the cheesecakes are done baking they looked a little puffy. Like souffle. I baked them for 30 minutes this time, but next time I am going to try 20 minutes. You want the centers to be wiggly still. I am still going to eat them though. Don't worry about that...

And as I promised, there was going to be some cracked cheesecake. I had some cheesecake mixture left over and put the rest into ramekins without crust. That is what this one is. I wonder if the crust would have protected it somehow...

My favorite way to extract the hot ramekins from the water bath is to use a canning jar grabber. Don't you just love my technical term for it?  I placed all of the ramekins onto a cooling rack. When they were completely cool I put them in the refrigerator to chill for a couple hours. It was hard keeping the kids away from these cheesecakes. They begged me to let them eat hot cheesecake. But the chef in me refused to allow anyone to eat an unchilled cheesecake.

After they had chilled for 2 hours it was time to check out the consistency of the cheesecake. It looks done to me. Let's dig in...

The kids and I all had our own little personal sized cheesecake. The groans were audible. Robert wasn't home so he will have to have his later. I can't wait to have seconds....