By Rachel
You will need:
For the Cranberry Swirls (and sauce for serving):
1 - 12 ounce bag of fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups water
zest of one lemon or orange
For the Crust:
2 cups of graham crackers, finely crushed (I used blender to crush them)
2 Tbs sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
For the Cheesecake Filling:
3 - 8 ounces packages of cream cheese at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 Tbs flour
4 eggs, room temperature
1 Tbs heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
To make:
First make your cranberry sauce, you will use this for the swirls and the sauce to serve the cake with. In a medium sized saucepan, place cranberries, sugar, and water. Then, over medium-high heat, cook the ingredients until boiling, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat to medium low and gently boil the filling, stirring often to prevent the filling from burning, until it becomes thick and syrupy and reduced to about 2 cups. This takes about 20-30 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in the zest, and let cool completely before using. (I am not a fan of chunks in my cheesecake so I put this sauce into the blender after it cooled a bit and pureed it until it was smooth and delicious - I highly recommend doing this to get rid of any cranberry chunks). Set the sauce in the fridge while you work on everything else.
In a medium sized bowl combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and melted butter. Press the crumbs evenly over the bottom and about 1 inch up the sides of the springform pan. Cover and refrigerate while you make the filling.
Remove the crust from the refrigerator and pour half the cheesecake filling into the pan.
Let the cake cool before covering with plastic wrap and refrigerating. This cheesecake tastes best after being refrigerated at least eight hours or overnight. Now kick back, relax and bask in the benefits of your baking talents!