Low Carb Cheesecake

Got this recipe somewhere off the internet, but I have modified it to suit my tastes and the way I bake.  Been wanting to try a basic cheesecake recipe, as cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts.  This was a hit at my Single Mom's.  I found topping it with Apple-Pear Pie was a great combination.  You don't have to feel guilty eating this cheesecake (a slice or two, not the whole thing), as it's healthy.  The xylitol is a sugar alcohol that will NOT spike your insulin levels.  The lemon gives it really good flavor and I highly recommend adding the zest to it.

Filling Ingredients:

• 3 pkgs cream cheese, room temp (I used light cream cheese)
• 4 eggs, room temp
• 1.5 tspn vanilla extract
• 1.5 tspn lemon juice (juice of 1/2 lemon)
• 1.5 Tbspn lemon zest (this was my addition - zest of 1/2 lemon)
• 1 1/3 cup xylitol (if I were to do this again, I would only use 1 cup xylitol - this stuff is expensive!)
• 1/4 cup sour cream (if you don't want to add this, you don't have to - I didn't)

Crust Ingredients

xylitol, no salt butter, almond meal (ground almonds)

• 1 cup almond meal
• 2 Tbspn butter, melted
• 2 Tbspn xylitol

Directions:

• Heat oven to 375° F.
• Grease bottom & sides of springform pan.
• Combine ingredients for crust and press into the bottom of a springform pan.  
• Bake for 8-10 min., until fragrant and slightly brown.

It crumbly . . . 

If you don't have a springform pan, you can use a casserole dish or pie plate

Golden brown

• Raise oven temp to 400° F.



Add caption

• Put cream cheese in a mixing bowl and beat until fluffy.  Add other ingredients, scraping the bowl, fully incorporating each ingredient.  When incredients are all combined, scrape one more time, beat one more minute and pour mixture inot pan over crust.  I forgot to put the sour cream, so hope that didn't make a huge difference.  

I forgot to leave the cream cheese at room temp, so I heated in the microwave (non ideal) for 1 min or so

The KitchenAid is mixing it (Speed 10).  You can use a hand mixer, too.

While the cream cheese was being whipped into "fluffhood", I  did the lemon stuff - juicing and zesting.

Put the remaining ingredients into the cream cheese in 2 batches & mixed on Speed 4 .  It has up to 10 speeds.

Hard to see here, but I thought I had gotten all the lumps out, but I was wrong.  Mix until the mixture is SMOOTH completely.

This seemed a bit too liquidy, but it worked.

• Put cheesecake on a sheet pan in case of drippage.  After putting cheesecake in oven at 400° F, turn the oven down to 275° F.  The original recipe said to bake at 200° F, but after 2.5 hrs of baking at that and it wasn't getting firm, I turned it up to 275° F and baked for another 30 min.  So, I'm not really sure how long it takes to bake at 275°, but try baking for 60-90 min, checking often after an hour.  When cake is firm to touch, but slightly soft in the center, or the center reaches 155° F, remove from oven.  I will have to make this cheesecake again or find a better recipe.

This would've been an easy cheesecake to make except for the screwed up baking instructions.  Finally it was baked through!

It was a thin cheesecake, but came out of the springform pan without falling apart!  Yay!  I forgot to grease it!.

• Chill completely BEFORE removing bottom from springform pan.