Friday, May 31, 2013

Memorial Day Cheesecake

Ingredients 
1 pre-made graham cracker crust
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature
1 14-ounce can (1 1/4 cups) sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions 
To make the filling: Using an electric mixer set at medium-high speed, beat the cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in the condensed milk a little at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat in the lemon juice and vanilla. Separate the cheesecake mix into three equal parts. Use red and blue food coloring to color to your liking (could use different colors for a variety of different holidays or occasions). Pour the filling into the crust; smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, 2 1/2 to 3 hours.


My Take
I know I haven't posted in a bajillion years, but I'm truly living up to my name as a terrible housewife because I've tried absolutely zero new recipes. But since I had to work this year on Memorial Day, I wanted to do something special for my co-workers and decided to do a spin off on the No-Bake Cheesecake recipe. Once again I altered the recipe and instead of using a full pie crust I bought individual pie crusts (found them at WalMart, Kroger didn't have them). And I still had enough left over for a full size cheesecake for me! The other thing I added was some cheery pie filling on the top of it. At first I didn't know if it would turn out the way I wanted it to, so when it did I was so excited. The goal was to layer red, white, and blue cheesecake so when you cut into it there'd be the three colors. I think the red layer needed a few more drops of red because it was more of a pink, but it was a HUGE hit with my co-workers so that's really all that mattered.