The Best Raspberry Cheesecake Ever!

So, this probably isn’t exactly the picture that comes to mind when someone says the word cheesecake, but this is the cheesecake from my childhood.  It was a rare treat we’d usually only get during raspberry season, but it's always been one of my favorite things.  I’ve tasted different varieties of cheesecake from all kinds of restaurants, even including the Cheesecake Factory, but none of them was ever as good as Mom’s.  Now I’m going to show you how to make it. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

Crust:
13 graham crackers
1 Tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup butter

Cheesecake:
12 oz. cream cheese
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ Tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 eggs

Fruit topping:
1 ½ cups juice
2 Tablespoons corn starch
½ cup sugar

First up, the crust.  Melt one stick of butter and set it aside.  Then, in a food processor or blender, grind the graham crackers into very fine crumbs.  Pour them into a 9 inch pie pan and sprinkle on the cinnamon and sugar.

Mix those ingredients together and pour on your butter.

With a fork, stir the crumbs and butter together until you get something that resembles wet sand.

Now, spread the crumbs evenly in the pan, and press them into shape.  I used a small measuring cup, which has a flat bottom and is the basic shape I want for the edges as well.  If you don’t have measuring cups like these, be creative.  I’m sure you can find the perfect tool somewhere in your kitchen. 

Now, place the crust in the fridge and preheat your oven to 325°.  It’s best if all the ingredients for the filling are at room temperature, so pull them out several hours ahead, or even the night before will be fine.  Put the cream cheese in a bowl and mix until it’s nice and smooth.  Then, add the lemon juice, vanilla, and sugar.

Mix those together, and you’ll end up with something like this. 

As evidenced by the glops of unincorporated cream cheese, this bowl and beater need to be scraped down. 

Ah, that’s much better.  You’ll want to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, along with the beater, several times throughout this process.  So, where were we?  Oh yes, time for the eggs.  I like to crack mine into a separate little dish and add them from there.  Not only does it give you a chance to pick out shells if you get them, but it’s also the perfect place to pick the white goobers off of the yolk.  Yes, my mom assures me that goobers is in fact, the scientific term for those things.  And yes, I do remove them from every egg I use.  You all were starting to wonder where I get these magical eggs that don’t have goobers, but really, it’s just a bit of my OCD showing.  Now that we’ve covered that, add your eggs, one at a time, to the mixture.  Make sure each one is fully incorporated before adding the next. 

Scrape and mix a few times until everything is nice a smooth, then pull out your pie crust and pour in the cheesecake mixture. 

Pop it into the oven and bake for 40 minutes.  There will still be a bit of jiggle factor when you remove it from the oven, but it should all move the same.  If the center is softer, give it a few more minutes of cooking time. 

As you can see, mine had a couple big air bubbles, but not to worry.  Those will be completely covered soon enough.  For now, leave it to cool for an hour or so before starting on the fruit topping.  If it doesn’t have time to cool down, the steam it gives off during that process will cause the cheesecake and fruit topping to separate.  For the filling, the first thing you need to do is wash your berries.  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen tv chefs just open the container and dump them in.  Personally, I’d like to get rid of as many bugs as possible.  Be gentle, though.  Raspberries are fragile. 

Now for the sauce.  Put your sugar and cornstarch in a pan and whisk them together.  This ensures you won’t have any lumps of cornstarch. 

Pour in your juice and turn the heat to medium.  I used a mixed berry juice.  You can use whatever flavor you like, but the closer you can get to raspberry, the better. 

Stir, making sure you get all the way into the corners of your pan, so you don’t miss any of the cornstarch.  Keep stirring until the mixture just comes to a boil, then turn off the heat.  Add the raspberries and stir gently. 

Let the mixture sit for a few minutes to give the raspberries a chance to give off whatever liquid they’re going to, then stir it once more, and pour it over the top of your cheesecake. 

Place the whole thing in the fridge and allow it to chill for several hours.  Don’t rush it.  For me, it’s best to do this right before bed. 

Mmmmmm.  Cheesecake for breakfast.  What?  It’s fruit and cheese and… ok, it’s cheesecake, but it’s fabulous, whenever you eat it. 
 

How to Impress a Southern Boy

Show him your biscuits!

 

I love biscuits. They’re deceptively simple and infinitely variable. And for some reason they really seem to impress people. As if they’re some kind of fancy or something. Really, they’re not. Yes, it is nice to have freshly baked warm biscuits on the table at any time of day, but the ingredients are basic, and the process is simple.

To me they will always bring back memories of being flat broke, which is quite apropros to the origin of this dish; it gained popularity shortly after the stock market crashed about a hundred years ago. Recipe Guy’s grandma learned to make them from her mom, who was feeding a family of 6 on less than half an income. I learned how to make them when I cooking with Food Bank ingredients. Every week, I got flour, margarine, and powdered milk. Every week, I made biscuits and ate them for breakfast with jam, for lunch with peanut butter, and for dinner with soup.

Had I known back then that I could make a cream gravy with those same three ingredients, I’d have been eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Because for all that it really is cheap Depression-era food, it’s freaking tasty!

Especially when you can dress them up a bit. Like with sharp cheddar in the biscuits and Argentinian beef sausage seasoned with garlic and chives in the gravy...

Biscuits and Gravy, Northern Style

What you need:

Biscuits:

• ½ c whipping cream
• ½ c milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• ½ c butter
• 2 c flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ c grated sharp cheddar (optional)

Gravy

• 1 large sausage
• 1 tbsp butter and/or bacon fat and/or sausage drippings
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 c milk
• salt
• black pepper

What you gotta do:

Let’s start with the biscuits. In your measuring cup, mix the cream, milk, and the lemon juice and let it sit for a few minutes.

I did this because I couldn’t find a smallish container of buttermilk. So yes, you can just use a cup of buttermilk here instead.

Chop the butter into chunks in a large bowl. For once, I’m not going to tell you to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Biscuits are more like pastry and pastry is best made with cold butter.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt to the big bowl.

With a pastry cutter, or a couple forks, cut the butter and flour together. You can’t do this with warm butter, you end up “creaming” them like you would with sugar and butter for cookies and that’s not the effect we’re going for here.

What you’re making are tiny chunks of butter covered in flour.

When you’ve got a nice mixture with a texture kinda like damp sand, make a well in the middle with a spoon and pour in your lemony cream.

You’re not going to actually taste the lemon in this. That’s not what it’s there for. It’s there to make the cream even more acidic than it already is. The higher acidity will cause more of a reaction with the baking powder (which is alkaline) and you’ll get lighter, fluffier biscuits.

Mix the cream into the buttery flour until it’s just combined.

Turn it out onto a floury counter. Do Not Knead The Dough.

I know it’s tempting, but the last thing you want to do to this stuff is stretch it. Stretching forms gluten and gluten is not flakey. Pat it down into a shape as closely resembling a square or rectangle as you can, then roll it a little flatter. Flour it, fold it into thirds and roll it into a rectangle.

Since I only needed to feed two people and since biscuits are always better freshly baked, I split the dough in half and froze some for later… (I totally promise to show you what I did with it)

Roll out the half you’re keeping into a rectangle. You can flour, fold and roll again if you want. The more you do this, the more layers you’ll have in your biscuits and the flakier they’ll be. But once will do, if that’s all you feel like.

Spread half your grated cheese over the middle, fold one third in. Spread the other half of your grated cheese on top of the folded part. Fold in the other third.

Roll the cheesey foldey dough into a rectangle and cut it into 8 pieces.

Bake these at 400 for about 12 minutes until they’re nicely golden and the cheese is melty.

If you decide to stop here and just eat cheese biscuits, I will totally understand.

But really, it’s only a few more steps to make the gravy. And you can even do it while the biscuits cook.

Remove the casing from the sausage and break it up into a hot pan.

Fry it until it’s golden then remove it from the pan to drain on paper towels.

Depending on how fatty the sausage was, you may or may not need to add bacon fat, but I recommend a little at least, just for the extra flavour.

Add the flour and pepper, and sautee them in the fat for a few minutes.

Slowly pour in the milk, stirring as you go.

Don’t worry if it gets all clumpy,

just add a bit more milk and keep stirring.

You can use a whisk to break up any clumps or a soft spatula to mash them.

Just keep stirring and adding milk,and maybe a little more pepper,

and eventually you will have a lovely smooth, happy gravy.

Add the sausage to the gravy to make it even happier.

Put a couple of the cheesey biscuits onto a plate and smother them with gravy.

Um, I need to go make more now.

What did your family make during the depression?