Cheesecake with Bing Cherry Sauce

The store had bing cherries on sale, and we brought a couple pounds home, only to find that they needed to be used asap.

So…what better use for cherries than cheesecake! Everyone loves a good cheesecake. Heck, folks love a bad cheesecake, but a good one is even better.

When making cheesecake, I use a 7″ x 4″ inch spring-form pan, because I prefer fluffy tall cheesecake, rather than dense, short cheesecake. But this recipe can be used in a 9″ x 2″ pie pan just as easily.

Preheat oven to 350

Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups graham crackers
• 6 tablespoons melted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional)

Melt butter, stir together with dry ingredients and extract, press into bottom of spring form, or over entire pie shell or cake form if you prefer lots of crust. (I use about half this amount, because I don’t like a lot of crust, just enough to keep the filling from leaking out of the spring-form pan.)

Filling:

• 2 eggs
• 1 lb cream cheese (not the whipped kind), softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• lemon zest to taste

Cream eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla together.  Add cream cheese and beat until smooth.  Set your mixer to medium, and whip the ingredients for 3 minutes.

Baking:

• For the tall spring-form pan, bake for about 40 minutes or until filling is set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. For a 9″ pie pan, check at 20 minutes, and then every 5 minutes until set.

• In a springform pan, while the cake is still warm, run a cool, clean knife around the inside perimeter of the pan, so that when the cake cools and contracts, it doesn’t crack.

• Cool to room temp, then refrigerate.

At serving, top with cherry sauce – recipe below: (This is the same method you use to make pie filling, although you need to double or triple the recipe to fill a whole pie shell.)

Cherry Sauce:

• Pit and stem 4 cups of cherries.

In a deep saucepan, combine

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot
• dash of salt
• 1/3 cup water

Stir in cherries. Cook and stir until thick and bubbly.

Cook and stir for 1-2 minutes more, then remove from heat, cover and let cool without stirring.