We’re actually just doing what’s for dessert this evening, so if you need some dinner ideas, you can check out my decadent vegetarian suggestions, or of course past dinners in this series! I know I’m going to be trying out some of the past WFD dinners in the near future!
This is a very easy recipe, and robust for making changes limited only by your imagination. Family and company have LOVED it, waxing almost poetic. I’m featuring the raspberry because it takes a bit of extra effort to make it without seeds. If you like seeds, just skip the de-seeding steps. But it’s a bit crunchy for a cheesecake so worth that effort IMHO. YMMV. Don’t you love Internet acronyms? But I digress. Putting the ingredient lists in the quote box for easy reference.
I am very chatty, sorry; but I am including helpful hints, where I’ve tested alternatives and where I haven’t. If you’re experienced, you can probably skip all that and just read the emboldened instructions. You can also serve this without topping, since there is fruit flavor in the cheesecake filling; or you could serve a plain vanilla cheesecake with fruit topping. But we like it best with both!
Easy No-Bake Cheesecake
Recipe by Elena Carlena
Supplies: This works best if you have an electric mixer and a large mixing bowl that won’t splash cream cheese all over your kitchen; you can just use a spoon or whisk, but it may not be quite as well-mixed or light. OTOH, you don’t need as big a bowl.
For the fruit topping, it is probably easiest if you have a blender and a strainer, and wide low storage containers to keep the results in. If anyone has an easier method to get rid of seeds, please make suggestions in comments!
Ingredients
(in order of appearance)
For cheesecake:
Two 8-ounce packages low-fat (Neufchatel) Philadelphia cream cheese
About 8 ounces yogurt, Greek if possible; for raspberry seedless, 2 containers (4 oz each) Yoplait Whips!
1-2 splashes of vanilla
1-2 splashes of liqueur
Sugar to taste
Sweet spices to taste
Oreo crust
For topping:
Fresh or frozen fruit, no sugar added, about 10 ounces, or as desired; if frozen, thaw before making cheesecake
Sugar to taste
Sweet spices to taste
Cornstarch if thicker topping desired
Note I have tried other brands of cream cheese. To my taste, they don’t taste right, so I recommend name-brand Philadelphia. You can find the 2-pack at WalMart at the same (or lower!) price as most other stores’ store brand.
Use your largest microwave-safe mixing bowl. Unwrap Neufchatel cheese and spread out in bowl. I chop it up a bit and smash it a bit flat, but if it’s difficult to work with, don’t worry about it too much yet. You can use full-fat cream cheese, it’s stiffer, but I have had lots of praise for the finished dessert’s lightness, so recommend the lower-fat cheese. Especially if your dinner is on the heavy side.
So anyway, take the above bowl and place it in the microwave! Nuke on high for 15 seconds. Remove. Now the cheese should be soft enough to spread out and smash flat. This gives more surface area for the microwaves. Nuke further until about thick-yogurt soft. In my microwave, this takes another 15 seconds on high.
Remove bowl from microwave and add yogurt. In general for this recipe, I prefer the thickness of nonfat Greek yogurt along with any embedded fruit or mixed up from the bottom; but all I found in raspberry flavor had seeds (I ate a lot of yogurt brands looking for seedless in preparation for this recipe!). So for seedless raspberry, I found Whips! Raspberry mousse. I found it at WalMart, so it’s widely available. It has no seeds. Each container is 4 ounces, so use two. Mix thoroughly with spoon. If using larger containers, they usually come in 5-6 ounces, so use about one and a half. I don’t measure it, but aim for a total of 8-9 ounces. Yogurt gives a great fruity flavor, but too much yogurt will not allow the cheesecake to reset. Goopy is still tasty, so it’s not the end of the world, but it looks a bit better when it can be served in pie-shaped pieces!
Next, add flavorings to taste. I always add a splash of real vanilla, it seems to add a sweeter dimension. Real vanilla is also available at WalMart at a reasonable price. You use about half as much for the same intensity as the imitation, so it’s worth it. WalMart’s brand tastes the same as the pricier brands, I’ve done the side-by-side comparison. Since you don’t want the cheesecake to have too many liquids added to it — again, it won’t set properly — the real vanilla is better so you can add less. If not using any other flavoring, add a second splash.
A splash is probably about 1/2-1 teaspoon, but I don’t measure. Sorry, that’s pretty much how I always cook.
Next, add my secret ingredient: Liqueur! In this case, of course, raspberry. Since I keep the vanilla a bit limited, the cheesecake will usually stand up to a couple splashes of liqueur for more intense flavor. If you want to pour a small glass for the cook, of course that’s allowed too!
Next, add a bit of sugar. For this step, whatever seems too little, maybe a tablespoon. I use turbinado sugar, which takes a bit more for sweetness; and buy the smaller-grained type so it mixes in more quickly, but I’ve also used the big-grain type when it’s all I’ve had and imagined how it would be when it melts whilst taste-testing; it will melt into the cheesecake during the time the cheesecake is in the frig setting, so you can use that. You can also use regular granulated sugar, that works fine too, of course will take a smaller amount for the same sweetness; I’ve used that when I’d run out of turbinado. Depending on the flavors, you can also use brown sugar, etc. I haven’t tried that or artificial sweetener. If you want those, you’re on your own for the experiment!
Now mix all ingredients thoroughly with your spoon. It tends to be a bit lumpy, but don’t worry about that at this point. Do stir thoroughly enough that you can taste test. Test for flavors and sweetness and adjust accordingly. We like a less sweet cheesecake, so I usually end up using maybe 1/4 cup turbinado sugar. Just add slowly; you can always add more, but can’t take it back! You can also add a bit of cinnamon or other sweet spice at this step. It sometimes seems to enhance the flavor. I didn’t do that here with the raspberry flavor, but did add a bit of allspice to a cherry cheesecake recently. Until then, it seemed a bit bland, even with cherry liqueur. Don’t use much of any sweet spice — maybe 1/8 teaspoon at most. You want an undertone that will bring out the fruity flavor, not a spicy flavor, in most cases. Again, of course, YMMV.
Once you have it flavored and sweetened to taste, it’s time to mix with the electric mixer or whisk. Remove spoon (I set it on a piece of wax paper for future use.) Mix until smooth, then mix on up to highest speeds to add air and fluffiness. Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally with the spoon and remix until all is thoroughly beaten and combined. When done, you will see the air. It only takes a minute or so with the electric mixer, although I don’t time it.
The filling is ready! Next, retrieve and uncover your crust. I use a commercially available Oreo crust or graham cracker crust. I find most fruit flavors go great with Oreo crust! The only one I haven’t used it for, so far, is peach. I think the fruit flavor is too delicate. For that, I used graham cracker.
Again, found at WalMart, so widely available. You can make your own if you really want to. It does have to stick together well. I recently had a crust that got smashed in the grocery bag, was hoping the cheesecake would hold it together. It didn’t. We had no pretty pie pieces out of that one.
Now, use your saved spoon to help pour your filling into your crust. Spread as evenly as possible to the edges. Smooth with a bit of a swirl. Cover.
Here’s another secret: Save that plastic interior that the pie crust comes in! You can invert it and use it to cover your cheesecake. It sets fine, doesn’t dry out even after days in the frig; once I tried it, I now use it all the time. You avoid losing any cheesecake to a foil or plastic wrap or other flat cover.
Refrigerate for at least 12 hours for the cheesecake to firmly set! On the one hand, that’s a little crazy-making when you greatly desire what you just made! OTOH, as the cook, you get to finish up any leftover yogurt and lick the bowl! ;-)
On the third hand, you can make this ahead for the holidays and it’s one less thing to do on the day!
Now you have time to make the topping: Start with fresh or frozen (but thawed), no-sugar-added fruit. I always do that so that I can make it to desired sweetness; again, we prefer it not too sweet. If you like it really sweet, feel free to get fruit with sugar already added. Store brand fruits that I’ve tried seem as good as the name brands. Most packages are 8-12 ounces, and the whole package makes about the right amount of topping for us. But use as much or as little as you like!
Note, below, the photos were taken in different light, in different areas of the kitchen; your fruit will not change color!
Add fruit and any juices to blender.
Process from low to high speed in blender until mostly liquefied (the seeds will still be whole). If I wanted a smooth topping but wasn’t worried about seeds, I would add sugar to taste and blend for quickest, easiest mixing. More about that later. For seedless, add sugar later.
For seedless topping, pour through strainer into a storage container. Push through with spoon as needed. If you have a small strainer like mine, be careful not to overfill.
The first straining took about four pours and many stirs and pushes, leaving seeds in strainer to be rinsed out in between.
After blending, most of the pulp will make it through the strainer, making a nice thick sauce. A few of the seeds went through, and I’d overflowed once, so I strained it all a second time!
You can use saved raspberry seeds and/or pulp in otherrecipes, compost, or maybe plant for raspberry bushes! Although they do say for plants, the seeds should be fresh. Please let me know in the comments if you have any experience with this!
Finally, add a bit of sugar to saved fruit, stir, increase to taste. Add sweet spices if desired (we didn’t). If you want your topping a bit thicker, stir in a bit of cornstarch. Cover and store in refrigerator. I used the lumpier turbinado sugar for this, it all mixed in after some hours in storage.
Now you can relax until ready to serve!
To serve, cut into 8-12 pieces, place on individual plates, top with fruit topping to taste. We like it dripping over the sides! Dig in, enjoy, and receive the accolades!
Variations: Did I mention you are only limited by your imagination?
Except for when de-seeding, we like whole or cut fruit on top of our cheesecakes, but if you want more of a sauce, just blenderize and add flavorings as above.
We are currently working our way through a recently-made chocolate-covered cherry cheesecake!: Used nonfat Greek yogurt from Aldi’s (full sugar though, their artificial sweetener one doesn’t taste very good), one and a half containers including all the fruit and puree from the second container; cherry liqueur; and frozen cherries. Since the fruit package said it might have pits, I cut all the cherries in half to make sure; didn’t find any pits so far! Between the juice in the frozen package and the cuttings, they were extremely juicy by that point, and the unsweetened cherries quite sweet already, so I put them in a saucepan, added a bit of cornstarch and a touch of turbinado sugar, and cooked them briefly over low heat, until the sugar dissolved and the sauce thickened (still a bit less thick than desired, it will thicken as it cools). Cooled on a bed of ice, then poured into a storage container and refrigerated.
To serve, place individual pieces of cheesecake on plates, top with cherry topping, and top now-cold cherries with Smucker’s “Magic Shell” chocolate fudge topping! It will take a bit longer to set on refrigerated desserts than frozen ones, but it will still set. Be sure to shake the fudge container thoroughly before squeezing! (I always experiment with my piece in case it’s not quite mixed.)
I think it’s even more important to make this cheesecake and fruit not-too-sweet, since the chocolate provided plenty more sweetness! My family pronounced this one “maybe even better than the raspberry!” This is the one for which I used the broken Oreo shell, so sorry, no photos this time. Maybe after Christmas!
For Thanksgiving, I’m planning a peach-caramel cheesecake: Also using the full-sugar nonfat Greek yogurt from Aldi’s. After cheesecake is thoroughly set, start with hot caramel topping. Add to saucepan, heat, add some cinnamon and/or other sweet spices (doing this just for Thanksgiving, to have a T-day dessert vibe). Stir thoroughly. Cool on a bed of ice.
Remove peach cheesecake from refrigerator. Poke equal-spaced holes with round utensil (wooden spoon works well, so do ends of electric beaters, so does a toothpick if you stir it around a bit!). Pour cinnamony caramel into holes and, as desired, over entire top. Cover and return to frig to cool.
To serve, cut into pieces, and top with diced peaches. We like those unsweetened, packed in juice. They’re plenty sweet with no added sugar, no artificial sweeteners. You can, of course, top with more hot caramel as desired! I haven’t tried that, though; not sure if it will melt the cheesecake. If you try it, please let me know!