Friday, July 04, 2008

Fourth-of-July Cheesecake


Sometimes you start a tradition without even realizing what you've gotten yourself into!

In need of cheesecake one year, and with ample supply of strawberries and blueberries, I made the dessert and let the kids use the red and blue fruits to decorate the cheesecake. The kids, in desperate need of repeating the treat the following year, made another Fourth-of-July cheesecake. Twice in a row. That makes a tradition, I guess.

The recipe is:
2/3 pound of graham crackers
1.5 sticks of butter
32 ounces of cream cheese
1.75 cups of sugar
1 Tbsp of vanilla
1/4 cup of cream (or 3/4 cup of Cool Whip)
1 quart strawberries
1 pint blueberries

Crush the crackers into powder, add melted butter. Pat into a jelly roll pan. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes.

Beat together the cream cheese and sugar. Add vanilla and cream. Spread into cooled crust. Decorate with fruit.

We used to make it look like a flag. But I don't like having to choose which kind of fruit I want on my piece of dessert. So we started doing the stripes instead.

Today I made this with organic strawberries, homemade cream cheese from raw milk, and raw cream. So even though it's nearly all fat and sugar (yummmmmm) at least it has a few redeeming characteristics.


Small batch
about 48 square-inches
6x8" or 9x5" or 7" round
1/2 package grahams (2.5 ounces)
3 Tbsp butter
1 (8 oz) bar of cream cheese
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp cream or 3 Tbsp Cool Whip
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and/or blueberries

2 comments:

  1. With that list of ingredients that you used, I would say it has LOTS of redeeming qualities. My hubby read it and said "Send some!" "UPS overnight can get it here!"

    We had a chocolate cake with whipped frosting and the strawberry stripes and blueberry star field.

    Yours sounds much better though. Might have to make that one next time!

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  2. And I just have to tell you that it was delicious! So glad we got to take a few pieces home. :-)

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