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.

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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.

Frozen Peppermint Cheesecake

Ingredients:
2 cups chocolate wafer cookie or sandwich cookie crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
2 cups heavy cream, whipped
Red food coloring (optional)
Smucker's® Chocolate Fudge Spoonable Ice Cream Topping (optional)

Directions:

1. LINE 9-inch round cake or springform pan with foil.
2. COMBINE cookie crumbs and sugar in medium bowl. Add butter; mix well. Press 2 cups crumbs firmly onto bottom and partway up sides of prepared pan. Chill.
3. BEAT cream cheese until fluffy in large bowl. Gradually add sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Stir in peppermint extract and food coloring, if desired; mix well. Fold in whipped cream. Pour filling into pan.
4. COVER; freeze 6 hours or until firm. Garnish with fudge topping, if desired.

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My Take
I got to make this recipe at my dad's house since they've got all the utensils to do it. Carol thought she had peppermint extract and didn't so we just used vanilla instead and added extra pieces of the crushed peppermint candy to get the peppermint flavor. We also didn't make the crust like the recipe calls for, we just used the pre-made Oreo crust and we didn't put the ice cream topping on either. Currently it's sitting in the freezer setting...I don't want to wait, I want to try it out now!! lol. So besides having the cheesecake part everywhere, I had no idea that you could make whip cream with just one ingredient. Good thing Carol was there to tell me I had to whip it first because I would have just poured the heavy cream into the bowl and then it wouldn't have been so fluffy. Then she showed me how to fold it in and go from there. The only downfall is it became less pink after that, so I'd add more food coloring next time (I only added four drops today).

The other thing is this recipe makes WAY too much for just one cheesecake so we had to make another mini one. It probably would have made an second one, but we didn't have another Oreo crust.

Original Recipe Here