Amazing Strawberry Cheesecake Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making a creamy, dreamy strawberry cheesecake. So let's get started. First off, preheat your oven to 350, so it's nice and hot. Now, in the bowl of your food processor, we're gonna add 18 gram crackers. That's two and a quarter cups, or 270 grams, once they're all pulsed up. You're also gonna add three tablespoons of sugar. One, two, and three. By the way, if you do not like graham crackers, or if you can't find them, any kind of dry biscuit would work. I often use speculoos cookies, but go to town. Even shortbread will work. Give this a pulse, and of course, you could have just used graham cracker crumbs if you have those in your pantry. Perfect. Transfer this to a bowl to hold everything together, and give this some richness. Five tablespoons, or 70 grams, of melted, unsalted butter. Get all that butter out. By the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every week. Mix this up together with your spatula, just so it's nice and moist all over. You want the texture of wet sand, basically. My butter is nicely mixed in, but when I squeeze this with my hand, it's not holding together, so I will add a little bit more butter. This happens if you're using graham crackers as opposed to the crumbs. Add an additional one to two tablespoons as needed. Nice. That works. Grab a nine-inch springform pan, and we want to give this a very light spray with some cooking spray, so everything releases nicely. Transfer your crumbs right into the pan. Give it a little bit of a shimmy, and now we are going to press down. The pressure will hold this together, and the key here is to not have a crust that's swimming in butter because it'll just drip out when you bake. It's not gonna be appealing. You want just enough butter to hold it together, which means you're gonna use a lot of pressure. I want the crust to go one inch up the side, so begin by just loosely pressing some of the crust to the side to create a general shape. And now, get to pressing. You know, cheesecakes have been around for thousands of years in various forms. I think the first ones might've been from ancient Rome, but they were quite different. I believe they used honey as a sweetener. And of course, cream cheese was not invented yet. This version is really beautiful. It has a light, delicate, creamy texture. It's not a dense brick of cream cheese, super delicate. And then to finish everything off, we're gonna have the most beautiful strawberry topping, but that comes later. As I press the side of the crust, I'm using my thumb or index finger just to press the top down so it doesn't get too high. One of the keys to being a great host or hostess is to have things at the ready. So if you have a dessert hanging out in the freezer that you can pull out once you know people are coming over, you'll have something delicious and be less stressed. This cheesecake is a perfect example. You could freeze it without the topping for up to three months, defrost it overnight, make your strawberry topping, serve it, and it's like no stress. My crust is compressed, so transfer this onto a baking sheet. And we're gonna bake this for 10 to 15 minutes at 350 or until it's fragrant and delicious. While our crust bakes, we're gonna make the filling. So you want three eight-ounce blocks, they're 227 grams each, of softened cream cheese, meaning it's nice and room temperature, it's not rock hard. Into your stand mixer, along with the whisk attachments. We're gonna mix this on medium-low for about three minutes until it's nice and creamy. You don't wanna mix your cream cheese on high because that'll pump too much air in, and instead of being creamy and dreamy, these little air bubbles will expand and cause cracking and a little bit of a firmer texture. Once they're in the oven. All right, let that mix. In the meantime, I'm gonna have three eggs cracked and ready to pour in. One, two, and three. Check for shells, looks good. My cream cheese is nice and creamy, so it's time to add 250 grams or one and a quarter cups of granulated sugar. Okay, for a bit of contrast, I'm adding a quarter teaspoon of salt. I'm gonna scrape the bowl down just a little bit and then let it mix for two minutes. Cheesecakes are super easy, they get a bad rap because people are afraid of them cracking and not looking beautiful on top. Well, normally it doesn't even matter because you're gonna top it with something delicious, but there are two things you can do to have a beautifully baked cheesecake. One, nice room temperature ingredients that mixed really well together, there's no lumps. Everything is nice and homogenous. And two is to bake it low and slow. It's the high heat that'll ruin things in a cheesecake. Let this mix on medium-low for two more minutes now. This is looking beautiful. Take a look at the texture. It already has a really silky, loose appearance, but this is just the start. Half a cup of sour cream, which is 120 grams, will give us a beautiful bit of extra lightness and tang. We want our cheesecake to be really well-balanced so it's not just sweet, it has a little bit of a tanginess and there's some zing coming in later on too. I also want two teaspoons of vanilla for some extra flavor. For that zing, I want about two teaspoons of zest. That's one lemon, please. This microplane is one of my favorite and most used kitchen tools. You can use it for zesting lemons and limes and oranges, but also for getting beautiful clouds of finely grated cheese. It smells so fragrant. Okay, pop that in. Now we're gonna mix this on medium for about a minute. This looks beautiful. So at this point, it has a soft peak, just like a lovely frosting. Scrape the bowl down. This is great as is, but we wanna have some more structure to the cake and also lighten it up a bit. That's where our three eggs come in. So mixing on medium-low, add one egg at a time. Let that egg incorporate and add the next. During this process, you should scrape the bowl down one time. Number two. I have a beautiful, light golden-colored mixture on the inside, but here, very pale. So let's scrape it down. The eggs are introducing a lot of liquid and really loosening our batter up, so we want to have them mixed in with no places like this where it's super thick because that'll bake up very differently. Last egg goes in, and we're gonna mix that up nice and loose. Do you see how easy that batter is? Cheesecakes are lovely. They just mix together, and all you have to worry about are the lumps. So as long as your cream cheese was nice and soft, you're 90% of the way there. Just gonna give this one final mix just at the very bottom and scraping the side. You can see I have a really lovely batter. Glossy, I don't even see any lumps. Break that out of your mixer, and now we're gonna grab our cooled crust and assemble. It's time to pour your filling into that cooled crust, and just look at that. So lovely. Give that a little bit of a jiggle. It's gonna get covered up with strawberries anyway, so I don't really care if it's perfect on top. My cheesecake is ready to go into the oven, 350 for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 300 and bake for an additional hour. Once it's done, turn the oven off, but leave the door closed for an hour. Here we want a slow heat, and when the oven is off, the cheesecake will finish baking and cool slowly. If you opened it up right away, the cheesecake could probably crack, and it's a bummer. Once it's cooled, we'll make the filling. In you go. Once your cheesecake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool on your countertop for about an hour, and then you can cover loosely with a tea towel or a paper towel and refrigerate overnight so it's nice and firm and ready to cut. Once your cheesecake is baked and cooled, we can make the strawberry topping. So grab two pounds of fresh strawberries, that's 900 grams, and we're gonna hull them and halve them after they've been well-washed. I also need one lemon, give that a slice. In a medium pot, I'm gonna add half of the strawberries along with three quarters of a cup of water, half a cup or 100 grams of sugar, and optional, but I like to add a tablespoon of lemon juice for a little bit of a lift, eyeballing that. And to help thicken things up, I'm gonna sprinkle two teaspoons of cornstarch over this. We're gonna stir this to combine, and then this goes over heat. This is so easy, and I think that so many cheesecakes are really great with a fruit topping. It gives you that little bit of freshness that complements the creaminess so well. Let's take this over heat now. Pop this onto medium heat, and we're gonna bring it to a boil, stirring frequently. My strawberries have come to a boil, so, you know, stir every once in a while and let it boil away for about five minutes. I want these strawberries to be nice and soft. After about five minutes, we can mash these up. I'm gonna continue cooking these for about 10 minutes until the sauce is nicely thickened. While you're mashing, you can go ahead and take this off heat if you want. You don't wanna get a steam burn, or you can blow as you put your hand down, because it's very hot down here. There's a lot of sugar, and the sugar really heats up. So, for example, it looks silly, but it really works. This has been mashed up, so we're gonna continue cooking for about 10 minutes until the sauce is nicely thickened. This has thickened up nicely, so I'm gonna take it off heat now, and I can add in the remaining pound of uncooked halved strawberries, as well as two teaspoons of vanilla. Give this a nice stir so everything is combined. Smells amazing, by the way, so good. These strawberries should be lukewarm to room temperature before we transfer them onto our cheesecake, so a big bowl will help cool things down. You can spread them out, and either let them sit on the countertop or pop them into the fridge. If they're in the fridge, stir them every few minutes. We'll be right back to assemble. Dismount your cheesecake, center it up, and pile high with strawberries. Give it a slice, and just like that, your strawberry cheesecake is ready to enjoy. Mm, fresh strawberries, a classic cheesecake base. It's a match made in heaven. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious recipe, and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my cheesecake playlist.