Cranberry White Chocolate Cheesecake

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day to ponder our blessings. A day to be grateful for all we have. A day to enjoy time spent with friends and family. A day to bask in the glory of delicious food.

And boy do I have something delicious to share with you today! White chocolate cheesecake topped with homemade cranberry sauce on a gingersnap crust. Yum! I cannot wait to eat this cheesecake. Oh, it's gonna be good.



I combined 3 different recipes to create this beauty.

First, I started with a gingersnap crust from Our Best Bites.



The original recipe calls for pecans, but since my kids have nut allergies, I skipped them. Honestly, we generally prefer our desserts to be nut-free anyway {except when it comes to creamy peanut butter. Yum}. You can add the pecans back in if you want, of course :)

Gingersnap Crust:
1 3/4 C gingersnap crumbs (about 30 small cookies)
6 T real butter, melted
3 T brown sugar

Use a food processor to crush gingersnaps. Combine gingersnaps, brown sugar, and butter and stir well to combine. Press into a 9″ spring form pan. Evenly spread across the bottom of pan.

For the cheesecake filling, I used the Philadelphia Cream Cheese white chocolate cheesecake recipe.



The recipe calls for 2 6-square packages of Baker's white chocolate, but I used a bag of Nestle white chocolate chips instead. 1 6-square package of Baker's white chocolate cost almost a dollar more than a bag of white chocolate chips - over 2x as much!

White Chocolate Cheesecake:
4 pkg. (8 oz. each) Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 C sugar
1 t vanilla
1 12 oz bag white chocolate chips
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 325, or 300 if using a dark pan.

To melt the white chocolate, dump the bag into a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 1 minute and stir. Microwave for another minute and stir again. You should have perfectly melted white chocolate :)

Beat cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl with mixer until well blended. Add chocolate; mix well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating on low speed after each addition until just blended. Don't over-beat or you'll have cracks in your cheesecake. Pour over crust.

Bake 55 min. to 1 hour or until center is almost set. Run knife around rim of pan to loosen cake; cool before removing rim. Refrigerate 4 hours.

Before baking, I topped with fresh cranberry sauce. Next time I might add the cranberry sauce after baking. It took longer to bake with the cranberry sauce on top. Since I couldn't see the cheesecake itself through the cranberry sauce, it was harder to tell when it was done. And it made the pan a little too full during baking. Live and learn, right?

I made this super simple cranberry sauce recipe from AllRecipes. I made a double batch so we can have plenty for Thanksgiving.

While cooking:


Finished perfection:


Cranberry Sauce:
1 cup white sugar
1 cup orange juice
1 (12 ounce) package fresh cranberries

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sugar in the orange juice. Stir in the cranberries, and cook until they start to pop (about 10 minutes). Remove from heat, and transfer to a bowl. Cranberry sauce will thicken as it cools.

I like to cook it a little longer; I like to have more popped cranberry goodness loose in the sauce.

Ready to go in the oven!



And the finished, pre-cooled product {I'll take the sides off tomorrow, just before serving}.





Don't you just want to eat it? I'll understand if you lick the screen ;) I licked the spoon with everything combined and it was delicious. I can't wait to try it tomorrow!

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Blog LO and Chili Recipe

In case you're wondering, yes, I'm still pregnant. Monday is my due date. Hopefully he'll come out soon! Wouldn't it be hilarious if I had a 2nd due date baby? I wonder what the statistics for that are?

Anyway, I planned on waiting till his arrival to post my new blog LO, but...I'm impatient. I didn't want to have a Christmas LO anymore. So I plopped in some pics that will be replaced once he's here (at least, the ultrasound and family pics - Emma's pic will likely stay the same:)). I used geniaBeana's portion of the GDS January collab, Shimmer. Here's a preview:





Isn't it pretty? Of course, you can only get it (and the rest of the collab) if you spend $10 in the GDS store this month. Unless, of course, you have special CT privileges;) She has a couple of other kits up her sleeve that are just GORGEOUS as well:) I can't wait to show them off.

So, to keep myself occupied while waiting for baby, I've started on a really fun project. I got the idea sometime before Christmas, but of course life was too busy with Christmas and getting ready for baby to do much about it. Well, now that my house is all cleaned up after Christmas and everything is ready for the baby, I can work on it. It's gonna be awesome.

You're probably wondering what it is now, huh? Well, over the years, I've collected lots of recipes. Some I got from packages of Cool Whip or cream cheese etc, others I found online and printed, some I cut out of magazines, and some I received as recipe cards. I had all these recipes thrown into a file folder with minimal organization. The problem with this, however, is that it makes it harder to find recipes when I want them. Or I forget I have them altogether. Soooo...I'm making myself a recipe collection book. I'm going to get a binder and organize my recipes by type. It'll be a sort of scrapbook. It will incorporate some digiscrap kits, so it will be a somewhat hybrid project. I went through and categorized my recipes tonight.

I also need to type up and print some of the recipes I created. This will be useful to my family in the future. The only problem for others is that I season to taste, so I never measure spices in my own recipes! And just for fun, I thought I'd share some of my recipes with you:) Several months ago, I made my super-yummy chili to share with a friend who just had a baby. Her husband asked for the recipe...and I'm ashamed to say I never got around to typing it up for him. Until now. And I'm going to share it with you, too:)

Homemade Chili
1 lb ground beef
2 T oil
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2-4 cans stewed tomatoes
2-4 cans kidney beans, drained (red and light red)
1-2 cans corn, drained
chili powder
oregano
cumin
garlic
salt
black pepper
shredded cheddar (medium or sharp)
sour cream

Brown ground beef. In a large stockpot, sauté onion and pepper in oil. Stir in tomatoes, kidney beans, and corn. Add spices; season to taste. Spices listed in order of prevalence (i.e., more chili powder than cumin). Cook for at least 15 minutes. Stir in cheese and sour cream until they melt. Adjust seasonings as desired.

LOL, when I write it all out, it sounds so incredibly simple. But in reality, it takes awhile to make. I don't really know how long to say it needs to cook. I just picked a time. I'm constantly adjusting the seasonings as I go. That's what takes the longest; getting the flavor JUST right. In my opinion, this is the BEST chili ever. I almost put that as it's official name, but...that sounds kind of conceited and unprofessional, so I'm going to be lame and just call it homemade chili. Yeah, I'm boring like that. And of course, you can always pair it with cornbread or rolls or French bread...whatever you'd like!

Speaking of food, John and I used my new food processor for the first time last night and oh my gosh, we are in LOVE! We will NEVER chop or slice veggies the old fashioned way again!! SO awesome! This will totally speed up meal-making:D I'm excited to play with it more and more. Why oh why did I not get one sooner?! I guess part of it is that we didn't have one growing up so I didn't know just how cool they were. Also, I didn't know how reasonably priced they could be. Or at least, this one was - but we got it at the after Christmas sale. I have no idea what the original price for it was, but we got it for $24:)

Anyway, I'm going to go work on my recipe project for awhile:) Enjoy!