This is a pretty amazing cheesecake. The cheesecake part itself is super creamy and light, and then you add the fruit crumble and… perfection! It just shares that one downside of most cheesecakes, that it needs to chill overnight, so be sure to bake it while you still have one dessert’s-worth of something else to get you through the wait!
Ingredients:
Crust:
- 7 ounces Biscoff cookie crumbs, or cinnamon graham cracker crumb if you can’t find Biscoffs (1/2 a box of grahams)
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
- 24 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Topping:
- 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened and cut into small cubes
- 2 medium pears, chopped into bite-size pieces
To prepare the crust, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the cookie crumbs and butter until well mixed, then press evenly into the bottom of a 9″ springform pan.
Bake for 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.
Not very visibly different, but that’s ok!
To make the filling, first combine the cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl and beat on medium speed until smooth.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each.
Mix in the vanilla and cinnamon.
Finally, mix in the sour cream, then spread evenly in the prepared crust. Set aside to make the topping.
For the topping, combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. Use a pastry blender, fork, or your hands to mix the butter into the dry goods until the the butter is well distributed and has just small clumps throughout.
Spread the chopped pears over the cheesecake.
Sprinkle the prepared oat mixture on top of the pears.
Bake for 15 minutes at 350, then reduce the temperature to 200 and bake a further 2 hours and 10 minutes. Turn off the oven, remove the cheesecake, and run a knife around the inside edge of the pan. Return the cheesecake to the oven with the door shut and let it sit in the still-warm oven for a further 2 hours. Remove from the oven, cover, and chill overnight.
My coworker Carol said this was the best thing I’ve made yet, which is a no small feat!
Pear Crumble Cheesecake
From Bake or Break.
Crust:
- 7 ounces Biscoff cookie crumbs, or cinnamon graham cracker crumb if you can’t find Biscoffs (1/2 a box of grahams)
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
- 24 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Topping:
- 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened and cut into small cubes
- 2 medium pears, chopped into bite-size pieces
To prepare the crust, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the cookie crumbs and butter until well mixed, then press evenly into the bottom of a 9″ springform pan. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.
To make the filling, first combine the cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl and beat on medium speed until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each, then the vanilla and cinnamon. Finally, mix in the sour cream, then spread evenly in the prepared crust. Set aside to make the topping.
For the topping, combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. Use a pastry blender, fork, or your hands to mix the butter into the dry goods until the the butter is well distributed and has just small clumps throughout.
Spread the chopped pears over the cheesecake, then sprinkle the prepared oat mixture on top of the pears. Bake for 15 minutes at 350, then reduce the temperature to 200 and bake a further 2 hours and 10 minutes. Turn off the oven, remove the cheesecake, and run a knife around the inside edge of the pan. Return the cheesecake to the oven with the door shut and let it sit in the still-warm oven for a further 2 hours. Remove from the oven, cover, and chill overnight.
First, though, a 2-picture tutorial on cutting lemons to juice them, which I learned from the side of a lime box:
Transfer to a dish with a lid and freeze several more hours until firm.
Super simple, super flavorful
If you’re unsure how to get prepared spaghetti squash, cut a spaghetti squash in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds and glop in the middle with a spoon. Either bake, face down, at 350 degrees for an hour, or microwave each half, again face down, for 10 minutes. Either way, once they are cooked you just scrape out the insides with a fork or two, and it’s all set! What you don’t use for the cheesecake, you can eat for dinner with some spaghetti sauce!
Add the pudding mix and process again until evenly combined.
Dot the surface with the jam, in this case blueberry, and swirl it with a knife.
Chill at least 1 hour before serving.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Serve either with a spoon, sliced fruit, or cookies for dipping.
This recipe calls for white wine. I don’t drink, and don’t need most of a bottle of wine sitting around, so I was going to go with one of the normal substitutions (grape juice or additional broth) but I decided to use this as an excuse to get a bottle of sparkling grape juice. The bubbles cooked out, but I thought it added a nice tangyness I enjoyed – maybe wine would do this as well, I don’t know – I really don’t ever drink!
Add the carrots, salt, and pepper, and cook an additional 2 minutes, continuing to stir occasionally.
Add the wine and stock, increase the heat to bring the mixture to a boil, then bring it back down to simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the beans and zucchini and simmer another 5 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.
Add the peas, spinach, and Parmesan, and cook until they are warmed through and the spinach is wilted.
Serve with additional black pepper on top. Actually, or extra Parmesan? Why not.
Ingredients:
Add the butter and sugar and pulse until evenly combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie pan and press evenly into the sides and bottom of the pan.
Bake for 10 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
Once the pie crust and strawberry mixture have been cooling for a while (10-15 minutes), cut the remaining strawberries into slices, then set aside. Beat together the cream cheese and powdered sugar. Transfer the cream cheese mixture into the crust. Although the crust is pretty sturdy once it has chilled, I found it better at this point to drop the cream cheese in small blobs to distribute it widely, rather than trying to smear the cream cheese evenly and messing up the crust in the process.
Scatter the sliced strawberries over the cream cheese mixture.
Spoon the cooked/cooled strawberry mixture on top.
Refrigerate for 1 hour. Melt the chocolate chips, drizzle the chocolate over the top of the pie, and refrigerate a further 15 minutes. Then slice, serve, and do your own shouting about your pie prowess!
Ingredients:
Add the egg and vanilla, and beat again until combined. Reducing mixer speed to low, gradually add the flour mixture until just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips by hand.
Transfer the dough to the prepared tart pan. Spread the dough evenly to cover the bottom and sides of the pan – if you don’t spread it up the sides too, you’ll have so much in the bottom that there’s nowhere for your filling to go!
Refrigerate the crust for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Remove the chilled crust from the refrigerator, and use a fork to poke holes all over the surface of the dough covering the bottom of the pan, but not the sides. Bake 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned, then set aside to cool.
Add approximately 1/2 cup of milk and whisk until combined. Stir in the remaining milk and the cream, then place over medium heat and bring to a boil, whisking frequently.
Boil, whisking constantly, for 1 minute, then remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla. Pour the hot pudding into the prepared crust, then cover with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic directly down onto the surface of the pudding. Refrigerate at least 2 hours. If you have the freezer space, in this time freeze the bowl and beaters you will make the whipped cream with.
When the pudding and crust are chilled, make the whipped cream. Using your chilled bowl and beaters, if possible, beat the cream on high speed until it begins to thicken. Add the sugar and vanilla, if using, and beat until soft peaks form.
Spread the whipped cream over the pudding layer, and serve.
While the ideal is certainly to share this with friends and eat it all in the first day or two, I was pleasantly surprised to find that even 5 days in (I need more friends, clearly), neither the pudding nor whipped cream had started to seep liquid – this stayed in great shape until the whole thing was gone. Yum!
Ingredients:
Stir the sugar and vanilla into the browned butter.
Add the white chocolate and stir until just combined. The still-warm butter will probably melt the chocolate chips some – I was fine with this, if you don’t want it to happen you can just let the butter cool some. Spoon the dough onto the prepared sheets in roughly golf-ball sized portions.
Bake for 9 minutes, rotating the pans and switching racks half-way through.
Cool on the pan briefly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Combine the chocolate and butter (and coffee, if using) in the bowl of a double boiler over just-simmering water (or just in a pot over very low heat, if you don’t have a double boiler). Cook until both butter and chocolate are completely melted and can be stirred together totally smooth.
Gently fold 1/3 of the beaten eggs with a rubber spatula, stirring gently until completely combined. Repeat with each of the other two thirds, again stirring gently to not deflate the eggs.
Gently pour the batter into the prepared springform pan, and smooth the top with your rubber spatula.
Pour the boiling water into the outer pan until it comes up to about half-way up the sides of the springform, then carefully transfer the whole thing to the oven. Bake 22-25 minutes, then remove from the oven, take the springform out of the larger pan, and let it cool on a wire rack. At this point the center of the cake will still seem VERY jiggly and uncooked, but as it cools it will firm up.
Once it has reached room temperature*, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least four hours before serving.
Process until smooth.
And you’re done! The perfect level of effort!
sparecake 