Tie dye Cheesecake

Revisiting a year ago today, since I really love this cheesecake recipe:



Jan.6, 2008


I made my belated birthday cake last night. All of this fabric dying, got me thinking about fancy designs and we already had all the ingredients for cheesecake, so I made a tie dye designed cheesecake. I learned how to do this several years ago while working in a small cafe in downtown Columbia, Missouri. The cafe is no longer there, but it is still the best cheesecake recipe I've ever found.

Cheesecake



Crust:
1 stick of butter melted
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Mix all of these things together and use it to cover the bottom of a large spring form pan. Pat it down firmly with your hands to make it smooth. Then set the pan in the refrigerator until the filling is ready.

Filling:
3 8 ounce packages of cream cheese
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 heaping spoons of flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 Cup sugar

Set out the eggs and cream cheese until they reach room temp.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Put the cream cheese in a blender or food processor. Add the sweeten condensed milk and sugar and blend at low speed. Do not blend this batter on high speed because that creates too many bubbles. Turn off the blender each time you add an egg and then beat a little in-between each egg. Add vanilla and flour ( the flour is not an exact measurement, it is just a heaping regular tablespoon, not a measuring spoon).
Pour a cup of batter into a cup or bowl and set aside. Pour the rest of the batter onto the crust in the spring form pan.
The extra batter is for coloring. divide it up into two or three parts and color each with food coloring. Make alternating circles on the top of the cheesecake using the colored batter. Squirt bottles like the bear shaped ones that honey sometimes comes in work great for this. We have a lot of medicine droppers that have never been used, so that is what I tried last night and that was excellent for control ( the squirt style water bottle I started using lost it's top while I was pouring and made a mess). After the circles have been made. Use a butter knife to make lines from the center outward. I made eight of these lines. Then between those lines, cut lines going from the outer edge, inward. The cake is now ready for baking.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 225 and continue baking for another hour. Let it cool completely before removing it from pan. Loosen the edges from the pan with a small sharp knife, then remove the sides of the pan. Cheesecake is best served the next day, after it is good and cold from being in the refrigerator over night.