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Creamy, dreamy, and gluten-free! You really can have it all!…minus the gluten of course. Lately, more and more people around me are being diagnosed with gluten sensitivity or following gluten-free diets for other health related reasons. I must admit, that I’ve been insensitive of this and have been leaving my gluten-free friends out of my baking adventures. (Bad bad Mei!) In an effort to help make up for my oversight, this past weekend I decided to whip up a gluten-free cheesecake. Cheesecake is one of the easiest desserts to make gluten-free since it is cream cheese based and most cream cheeses are naturally gluten-free. It looks and tastes just like the regular thing, yet can be shared by everyone. If you’re making this for a gluten sensitive friend, be sure to double-check all of the ingredients since some manufacturers like to sneak gluten in where it really doesn’t belong. This recipe makes a wonderfully rich 9” cheesecake that takes you to a happy place with every bite! Enjoy!
Crust
8oz of gluten-free graham style crackers (1 ½ Cups finely crushed)
2 Tablespoons of white sugar
2 Tablespoons of brown sugar
5 Tablespoons of melted butter
Filling
32oz of cream cheese
1 ½ Cups of white sugar
¾ Cups of milk
1 Cup of sour cream
1 Tablespoon of pure vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons of cornstarch
4 Eggs
Zest of 1 small lemon finely grated (about 1 tsp)
Making the crust
1. Preheat oven to 350⁰F.
2. In a small bowl, mix all crust ingredients until nice and crumbly.
3. Press crust against bottom and sides of a well greased 9” springform pan.
4. Bake for 7ish minutes, until it’s a beautiful golden brown.
Making the filling
1. Preheat oven to 350⁰F and place a pan full of water on the bottom rack. Be sure that ALL ingredients are at room temperature before starting.
2. Beat cream cheese until smooth.
3. Cream sugar and cream cheese together.
4. Adding one at a time, gently mix in milk, sour cream, vanilla, and cornstarch.
5. Mix in eggs one at a time, being careful not to incorporate too much air into the batter.
6. Finally, I like to add some lemon zest to give my cheesecake a light zing (I feel like it accentuates the vanilla goodness too!)
7. Pour into prebaked crust.
8. After gently slamming the unbaked cheesecake on the counter a few times to get out all of the air bubbles (I hate air bubbles in my cheesecake!) bake in preheated oven for 1 hour.
9. Turn off the heat and let your cheesecake rest in the still hot oven for about an hour or two until it is no longer puffed up. (Don’t worry if it’s still a little wobbly.)
10. Remove from oven and gently run a knife along the edge so that it doesn’t get stuck to the pan and crack while it cools and shrinks.
11. I like to leave mine on the counter until it’s completely cooled then throw it in the fridge for a few hours to let all of the flavors blend and that creamy goodness to set. (This step takes a lot of will power!)
12. Garnish as you desire and enjoy this gluten-free goodness!
This looks delicious and would definitely go down well with my gluten-free friends, but I struggle to find Graham crackers here in the UK, could you recommend an equivalent??
Here are the ones that I used. –> http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kinnikritters except mine said “graham style”. Any gluten free cookie or wafer should work just as well with a minor modification in the amount of sugar that you add. To be honest the crackers that I used tasted alright but had a horrible chalky/sandy texture and after taste…that’s why I ended up adding the brown sugar which worked wonders. So just taste the crumb mixture before adding the butter, and then sugar/cinnamon it up until you think it’s delicious! Happy baking and please let me know how it turns out!
What a beautiful cheesecake! I too have some gluten-free friends and I keep gluten-free recipes in my arsenal just for them. This is a great one!
Thank you! And happy baking!
Give us cheesecake anytime, we love it! Haven’t done cheesecake for some time now. Got to get back to it.
Can’t go wrong with cheesecake! As you can probably tell, it’s one of my favorite desserts!
This looks like my idea of a perfect baked cheesecake, the texture looks spot on! I dread to think how bad for you it is though with 32oz cream cheese!
Thank you! Haha yeah it is quite a bit of cream cheese…I only bake these when I know that I have people to give them away to…great way to make new friends!