Peanut Butter Cheesecake

I’ve previously shared two cheesecake recipes from my trusty cookbook and have since continued to explore recipes with additional flavors. The cheesecake brownie cupcake recipe is here, and the lemon one is here. This week, I had a request for peanut butter cheesecake, and I modified the recipe as follows:

 

Take 4 blocks of cream cheese out of the refrigerator 2 hours before preparing this recipe for ease of blending. Take your favorite jar of strawberry or grape (or any) jelly out of the fridge before baking to let it come to room temperature.

 

A 9x13 pan is good for a large family-style serving, so I nearly doubled the ingredients. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Melt 6 TBSP butter, add 2 cups graham cracker crumbs and 5 TBSP sugar*. Stir. Press into the bottom of a 9x13 pan and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and increase oven temperature to 450 degrees.

 

Put 4 blocks of cream cheese into a large bowl. Add 6 TBSP flour (I used 3 TBSP regular flour and 3 gluten free), 1 ½ cups sugar* and 1 ½ cups chunky peanut butter. Mix until blended.

 

Add 8 eggs, mixing between each egg- I used 4 real eggs and 1 cup of liquid egg white substitute. After the eggs have been blended in, add 1 cup milk- I used ½ cup coconut milk and ½ cup fat free lactaid milk. 

 

Note: these amounts are just about doubled from the original recipe for a round pan, however, the batter is more than will fit into a 9x13 pan. You will have enough extra batter for 6 cheescake cupcakes and a mini loaf pan. The batter will rise as it bakes so you do not want to fill the pan to the top. You can use small wafer cookies as the crust in the cupcakes or pour the batter into the cupcake papers without a crust.

 

Pour the batter into the pan, leaving at least a ½ inch from the top edge of the pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 250 degrees. Bake another 40 minutes. When you take the cake out of the oven, run a knife around the edge between the cake and the pan, and let the cake continue to cool. 

 

Now comes the fun part! Well, baking is fun for me in general, but this is extra fun: add 5 or 6 large spoonfuls of strawberry or grape jelly into a pastry bag (or any small plastic bag or icing tool). Cut a small hole into the tip of the pastry bag or the corner of a square bag and pipe the jelly across the top of the cheesecake in a lattice shape. Add more jelly to the bag if you use it all before the design is done. This is the first time I used a pastry bag to pipe anything, so the jelly was a bit squiggly, but that’s ok! It tasted great!

 

*note: this is already a reduction in the amount of sugar called for in the original recipe. I know some of you (like me) automatically cut the sugar in a recipe. The original recipe called for more than this, so the reduced amounts listed here are not “too sweet”.