cheesecake

So, I had my first cheesecake experience last week. I spend a lot of time baking in the kitchen and I have never made homemade cheesecake... until now. Cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts. I had four bars of cream cheese just hanging out in my fridge and decided cheesecake was the best solution to my abundance.

I just made a basic cheesecake but topped it with some cherries on half, chocolate on the other half. I was unaware my husband doesn't like cherries... he got his with chocolate and caramel.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted (I used margarine)
4 packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs

Directions

• Heat oven to 325 degrees
• Mix crumbs, 3 tbsp sugar and butter; press onto bottom of 9 inch spring form pan.
• Beat cream cheese, 1 cup sugar and vanilla with mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust.
• Bake 55 minutes, or until center is almost set. Loosen cake from rim of pan; cool before removing rim. Refrigerate 4 hours.



Toppings optional... I used cherry pie filling until I discovered that chocolate would make it even better. My favorite combination was melting about 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips in the microwave and drizzling it in thick stripes over the top and adding cherries on top of that. Oh my, it was amazing! My husband loved the melted chocolate with caramel topping over it. It's the basic of all cheesecakes but sometimes simple is good. I'm not entirely sure how happy I was with the crust, it could have been better. I'm happy with my first cheesecake though. Next time, it will be even better.