May I access our hive mind? Paul would like strawberry cheesecake for his birthday dessert, and I have never made strawberry cheesecake (I believe he is imagining a plain cheesecake, with a strawberry topping). I HAVE made a very successful chocolate-crusted pumpkin cheesecake, and I’d love to just make that but completely different, but it’s not a quick ‘n’ easy modification: I could leave out the spices, but leaving out the pumpkin is a totally different matter; and I would need an entirely different crust, because I don’t want it chocolate.
I can of course search online for recipes myself, and I have been doing that for the last 20 minutes—but for one thing, I keep finding recipes for people who are BORED with strawberry cheesecake and want something FRESH, so it’s, like, “STRAWBERRY MANGO CHEESECAKE CROISSANT BITES!!” or whatever; and for another thing, we all know the best way to get a recipe is from someone who makes it all the time and knows it always works out well (see above for a chocolate-crusted pumpkin cheesecake recipe).
Do you need strawberries swirled in, or can they go on top afterward? This is my go-to cheesecake recipe: https://www.mostgladly.net/cj/2012/12/obituary-cheesecake-for-real.html
If I were asked for a strawberry cheesecake I would make that one, and serve it with a bowl of quartered strawberries that I had sprinkled with sugar and a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and left to steep for an hour or so. That way everybody gets their preferred proportions of cheesecake/strawberry.
I’ve made my mother in law’s basic cheesecake a few times with great success – I imagine you could doctor it with a strawberry sauce and strawberries.
4 (8 oz) pkgs of cream cheese
1 cup sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 stick melted butter
1 pt sour cream
Mix ingredients in order given. Pour into 9-1/2 cheese cake pan. Place the pan in a larger pan of water into a 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until golden brown. Take out of oven and remove from pan of water. Let cool for two hours. Make sure it is completely cool to avoid falling apart when you remove the sides. Place in refrigerator and chill.
Or you could totally cheat and do an easy cream cheese pie –
1 9 inch baked graham cracker crust
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
Pie filling.
Beat cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in milk until smooth. Stir in lemon juice and vanilla. Pour into piecrust, top with filling. Chill until set.
There. I’ve given away all my secrets.
My mom regularly made a strawberry cheesecake. She passed away almost two years ago, but I was able to track down her recipe files when she did, so here is her strawberry cheesecake recipe, which everyone seemed to love (I don’t personally like cheesecake so I’m not a good judge!).
New York Style Cheese Cake
Pam
20 Oreo Cookies
3 Tablespoons plus 2 Tablespoons melted butter
3 (8oz) Packages cream cheese
1 Pint sour cream
6 Eggs
1 Heaping tablespoon flour
1 Cup sugar
1 Teaspoon vanilla
2 Pints of Strawberries
3 Tablespoons sugar
• Remove cream cheese and sour cream from refrigerator and allow to reach room temperature.
• Preheat oven to 325.
• Spray spring form pan with Pam and line outside of pan with aluminum foil.
• Crumble Oreo cookies in food processor. Mix crumbled Oreo cookies thoroughly with 3 tablespoons of melted butter. Line the bottom of the pan with this mixture and press evenly and firmly to form lower crust.
• Using hand mixer, mix cream cheese and sour cream until creamy.
• Add eggs, sugar and vanilla and blend well with mixer.
• Add flour and 2 tablespoons of melted butter. Mix about 2 minutes. Don’t over beat, as this will cause air bubbles.
• Pour mixture into Oreo crust lined spring form pan.
• Bake 1 hour.
• Turn off oven and leave cake undisturbed for ½ hour.
• Open oven and leave cake undisturbed for ½ hour.
• Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack. Let sit for ½ hour and then remove sides of the spring form pan.
• Refrigerate the cake.
• To make the topping, cut up one pint of strawberries and mix with 3 tablespoons of sugar.
• Heat over medium heat stirring constantly.
When strawberries start to soften, use a potato masher to crush heated strawberries.
• Continue heating and stirring till mixture thickens slightly.
• Cut up remaining pint of strawberries into slices lengthwise so that they maintain the strawberry shape.
• Add to thickened, heated strawberry mixture and continue to heat till newly added strawberries soften.
• Remove from heat and refrigerate till cool.
• Spoon cooled strawberry mixture over top of cake.
• Keep refrigerated till ready to serve.
**Alternate version: Use 1 can Comstock pie filling instead of fresh strawberries, and cover the top of the cooled cake.
Michelle, who blogs at Brown Eyed Baker, is my go-to for every single kind of cheesecake, and her standard new york cheesecake is very damn legit. https://www.browneyedbaker.com/recipes/desserts/cheesecake-recipes/
Brown Eyed Baker is my go-to for everything and I haven’t been disappointed yet.
This is a good recipe for a strawberry pie filling. It could be used as a topping on a plain cheesecake. It’s a good, simple recipe to top pancakes/waffles and biscuits too. It has a bit of syrupy sauciness but also fresh strawberries.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/223204/strawberry-pie-filling/
If he would like a chocolate element to it as well, I use this recipe (swapping out different fruits and white/milk/dark chocolate chips depending on my mood) as my go-to base recipe every time I make cheesecake. I’ve done dark chocolate strawberry before and it is fabulous! https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/25642/white-chocolate-raspberry-cheesecake/
My daughter always asks for cheesecakes for her birthday. Her preference is whipped cheesecake over baked, my preference is to not use gelatine.
I’ve always found good inspiration here:
https://www.janespatisserie.com/category/cheesecake-2/
A lot of variety and easily adaptable. I haven’t searched for strawberry cheesecake, but I bet you’d find something you can use (this year she is eying off the carrot cake cheesecake … a carrot cake base for a cheesecake far more decadent than cream cheese frosting).
I like the NY Cheesecake recipe that is on the back of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese box. I make a simple strawberry sauce to put on top. It’s pretty basic but it’s always a hit in my house.
https://www.kraftheinz-foodservice.com/recipe/220662/New-York-Cheesecake
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/43914/supreme-strawberry-topping/
This is my go to for strawberry cheesecake. I like that she includes strawberries in the cheesecake mousse. It is set up as a pie, but I think you could bake the crust in a springform pan like a cheesecake. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/strawberry-cheesecake-pie/
My go to cooking / baking site is Once Upon a Chef. She seriously has the BEST recipes that are not overly fussy. She does have a cheesecake with raspberry topping recipe posted that has great reviews—could you just modify for strawberries? The site author is very responsive to questions and such i the comments and will offer suggestions. I just can’t speak highly enough for her recipes (though I have tried this one admittedly) (note-It is ricotta based so a little different than most American cheesecakes but I always prefer ricotta based ones, just a word of warning)
https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/ricotta-cheesecake.html/comment-page-1
Just checked my go to recipe site (I usually use her for mains, but her apple crumble is sensational) and she has a strawberry cheesecake!!
https://www.recipetineats.com/strawberry-cheesecake/
Reading this post and the comments yesterday gave me such a hankering for cheesecake that we ran out at 8:15 pm on a Sunday night to get a piece of cheesecake to go before the nearby restaurant closed at 9. #NoRegrets! 😋
I’m not normally a big cheesecake person, but was really happy with a lemon ricotta cheesecake I made for my stepdaughter last fall. I don’t remember the recipe I used for the actual cheesecake, but I think what set it apart was using a homemade ricotta, made using Ina Garten’s recipe over at the Food Network site. I strained it for longer than she said because I wanted it to be thicker. The ricotta comes out with a sort of delicate creaminess that is unlike any store-bought ricotta I’ve ever tried.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/homemade-ricotta-recipe-1923290
I swear by Taste of Home’s recipes.
I made the blueberry version of this and it was both easy and delicious (except the crust was a little fussy BUT.)
https://www.seriouseats.com/no-bake-cheesecake-with-freeze-dried-fruit
This is our go-to no bake cheesecake recipe (uses cherry pie filling, but you can easily make a strawberry topping): https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/49066/the-best-unbaked-cherry-cheesecake-ever/
My husband makes this himself, so it’s pretty straightforward, and delicious. You may want to reduce the sugar in the filling, but I’m not a good judge since I don’t really eat sugar much.
Can’t help with the recipe, but this has now made me homesick for the only kind of cheesecake I had until I was in my twenties – my mom’s cheesecake with the cherry pie filling on top. I have made all kinds of fancy chocolate and pumpkin and toffee cheesecake in the many, many subsequent years, but it’s still what I think of first when I think cheesecake.