Nothing beats an awesome cheesecake. This recipe was given to my mother when she was teaching in the Catholic schools back in the 1970’s. The teacher who gave it to her had been using it for years, so it is pretty safe to assume that the recipe is from the 1960’s at the earliest.
The teacher’s name was Ms. Sunday. I did run this by my mother to see if this lady would be alright with us sharing her recipe, and my mom assured me that not only would Ms. Sunday not mind, she would be thrilled that it’s still out in the world.
Be warned…this is not a light cheesecake. When you eat a slice, you will know you ate something glorious.
Some of my fondest memories as a child were making this with my mom. Initially, we followed the recipe to the letter (even though nobody in my family is a fan of graham cracker crusts). When I was in high school, I convinced my mom to experiment a bit. Can one modify a decades-old cheesecake recipe? Yes, you can! Here are some of the things we changed over the years. Some of the modifications are handwritten on the original recipe, and everyone ought to be thanking their lucky stars that it was my mother who wrote the tweaks, and not me with my beyond atrocious handwriting.
-You can use Neufchâtel cheese in place of regular cream cheese. This change was an accident on my part, since I am a scatterbrain and grabbed the wrong cheese at the grocery store. It didn’t hurt the taste at all, and it was lower fat! Win-win, right?
-If you don’t like graham cracker crust, you can (and should) use some kind of cookie. Our first foray with this was Sandies shortbread cookies without pecans. If you don’t have a nut allergy, like I do, definitely try the pecan ones…I’m sure they would taste amazing as a crust! If you do this, skip the extra sugar.
-Do NOT use low-fat cream cheese. We tried that once. The taste and texture told us to never do it again.
-Use real, high-quality vanilla extract. Trust me on this one. The cheap stuff will not cut it.
-If you don’t have a good springform pan, get one for this recipe. We tried it in a pie plate once, and wow, was that a mistake.
-If you don’t like shortbread cookies, another variation you can try is those Danish butter cookies that come out around Christmas. Also, skip the extra sugar if you use these cookies.
This was written by our contributing writer, Hilary Stifling.
We would also like to thank Ms. Sunday for this beloved recipe.
Image Source: Unsplash, mahyar mirghasemi
The photo of the recipe was taken by Hilary Stifling.
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