Spiced cheesecake - country living

16 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
¾ cup Unsifted all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons Finely chopped pecans, lightly toasted
½ teaspoon Ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon Ground ginger
⅛ teaspoon Ground allspice
4 8-oz packages cream cheese
1 cup Whole-milk ricotta
1 8-oz container sour cream
1½ cup Sugar
5 tablespoons Cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon Salt
¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter or margarine
1 To 2 T water
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
½ teaspoon Grated lemon rind
4 Large eggs
4 teaspoons Vanilla extract
2 teaspoons Ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon Ground allspice

Directions

GINGER CRUST

SPICED-CHEESECAKE BATTER

1. Prepare Ginger Crust: In large bowl, combine flour, pecans, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and salt. With pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in 1 T water and the vanilla; if necessary add remaining water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until dough holds together. Form into a ball.

2. Heat oven to 350'F. On lightly floured surface, roll out Ginger-Crust dough to ¼-inch thickness. With 3-inch- round cookie cutter, cut out five 3-inch rounds; reserve scraps. Cut each round in half. Press reserved dough scraps into bottom of 9-inch springform pan. Arrange half rounds around inside of springform pan with flat edge against dough in bottom of pan; press to secure half rounds.

Line dough with foil and weigh down with pie weights, dried beans, or rice. Bake 10 minutes; remove foil and weights and bake 10 minutes longer or until crust is lightly browned. Cool crust in pan on wire rack.

3. Prepare Spiced-Cheesecake Batter: Reduce oven temperature to 300'F. In large bowl, with electric mixer, beat cream cheese, ricotta, sour cream, sugar, 4 T cornstarch, and the lemon rind until smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined.

4. Remove ½ C batter to small bowl; stir in vanilla, the remaining 1 tablespoon cornstarch, the cinnamon, and allspice until smooth. Pour half of plain cream-cheese batter into pastry-lined pan; spoon half of spiced batter over top. Gently spoon remaining plain batter over spiced batter.

5. Spoon remaining spiced batter into pastry bag fitted with medium-size (¼ inch opening) round tip. Pipe 4 concentric circles of spiced batter on top of plain batter. Starting at center of cheesecake, pull a toothpick through batter to edge of pan to form lines dividing cake batter into quarters. Starting from the edge and going toward the center, pull additional lines in opposite direction between each pair of existing lines to form flower design.

6. Bake cheesecake 1 hour. Turn off oven and let cake stand 1 hour longer in oven. Cool cake in pan on wire rack to room temperature, then refrigerate cake until firm-several hours or overnight.

7. To remove cake from pan, place springform pan in roasting pan of boiling water up to 1/2inch from top of springform pan for 30 seconds; lift pan out of water. Remove side of springform pan. Place cake, still on pan bottom, on serving plate. To serve, cut into 16 slices; refrigerate leftovers.

Reduced-Fat Cheesecake: Follow directions and ingredients as in Spiced Cheesecake, but replace the cream cheese with four 8-oz packages light cream cheeese, replace the sour cream with one 8-oz container non-fat yogurt or light sour cream, replace the whole-milk ricotta with 1 C re- duced-fat ricotta cheese, and replace the eggs with 2 large eggs and 2 large egg whites.

Country Living/November/91 Scanned & fixed by DP and GG

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