White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

This creamy dreamy cheesecake is the most perfect way to show your loved ones how much they mean to you! What better time of year for that than Valentines Day?? This recipe is a no-nonsense/not breaking the bank kind of recipe! I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good gig to me! This cheesecake isn’t even for my honey though… he, dare I say it, doesn’t like cheesecake!!! I know, I still married the guy… He has other great qualities to make up for this flaw. So this cheesecake is all for my ladies for GALentines Day! I’ve mentioned before that we have girls night each week, so this week we are celebrating Galentines Day, and this recipe totally screams “I love my ladies!” It is also gluten free (no crust on it… because we like to make things easy on ourselves around here…) but hey, by all means whip up your favorite graham cracker or shortbread crust to lay this beautiful cake on!

Ingredients: Cheesecake

-24 ounces cream cheese, room temp

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-10 ounces white chocolate, melted in 1/4 cup milk

-4 large eggs

-5 ounces sour cream

-Good glug of vanilla, like 1.5 tsp

-zest of an entire lemon

Cheesecake Directions:

-Preheat oven to 450 degrees

-Grease entire springform pan with neutral oil, and line bottom of spring form pan with parchment

-Wrap the entire outside of springform pan with foil (to sit in waterbath without water sinking into the cake)

-In stand mixer on medium high speed with paddle attachment, whip up cream cheese until smooth

-Add in sugar and whip together, scraping down sides with spatula

-Add in eggs, one at a time

-Add in melted white chocolate and whip to combine

-Add in sour cream, lemon zest and vanilla, whip to combine and scrape sides and bottom with spatula

-Pour into lines springform pan and place in waterbath on middle rack

-Bake 10 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 225 degrees and bake an additional 75 minutes

-Turn off oven and keep oven door cracked and let the cheese sit in oven for another hour (this transition in temp with help the top not crack

-Place the cheesecake on a cooling rack to come to room temperature and then store in refrigerator until ready to serve (covered in plastic wrap)

Ingredients: Raspberry Sauce

-10 ounce bag frozen organic raspberries

-juice from one entire lemon

-1 tbsp salted butter

-1 heaping tbsp raspberry jam

-1/4 tsp salt

-2 tbsp corn starch

-sprinkle of cardamom (about 1/8 tsp)

Raspberry Sauce Directions:

-In saucepan on medium low heat, pour in bag of frozen organic raspberries

-Squeeze in the juice of entire lemon (use the lemon you zested! also, catch those lemon seeds with your hands) -Add in your cornstarch and stir into the raspberry/lemon mixture until you don’t see any white or clumps anymore

-Add in raspberry jam, butter, salt and cardamom

-Whisk mixture together over medium low heat for about 10 minutes until thickened and whole pieces of raspberries are broken down to a sauce

-At this point, I put the mixture into a measuring cup and top with plastic wrap directly on raspberry sauce as to not form any film on top. Then place into the refrigerator (I just use a measuring cup because it makes it easier to control your pour on top of the cheesecake)

** If you don’t like the seedy texture from the raspberries, pass it through a sieve at this point and refrigerate until ready to use.

To Assemble:

-Run a knife dipped in hot water around the cheesecake before unhooking your springform pan

-Remove the outside of spring form pan, but keep the cheesecake on the bottom of pan and put onto cake platter

-Pour raspberry sauce overtop the cooled cheesecake and let it drizzle down the sides!

From my happy & healthy belly to yours!

Kate