Easy Summer Strawberry Cheesecake
A Cool Summer (or Anytime) Dessert!
Some people really like a salty snack, while some prefer a sweet one. Some people like rich desserts while others like light ones. Some people prefer fruit for refreshment while others, especially children, love gelatin (JELL-O!).
What if I told you that you could have an all in one dessert that would please everyone? What if I told you that it's easy to make too? "Not possible!", you say. Oh, but it is!
Let me tell you all about a very special cheesecake recipe that is "all of the above". You're going to love this one!
People are sometimes skeptical about the taste of this dessert when they hear that the recipe uses pretzels for the "crust". They seem to think pretzels will make the dish too salty. Once they try it, the absolutely love it. Even a former boss, who was skinny as a rail and lived on lettuce, raved about it while struggling to limit herself to one half of one normal sized piece.
Yes, it takes 2 hours total to make this but most of that time is "set up" time and is completely hands off.
So, are you interested in giving this a try? Read on!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups of crushed pretzels (not dust just no big chunks)
- 4 1/2 Tablespoons of White Sugar
- 3/4 cup of melted butter
- 1 cup of white sugar (separate from other white sugar need)
- 2 - 8oz packages of cream cheese (you can use light if you want)
- 1 - 8oz package of whipped topping (you can substitute light)
- 1 - 6oz package of strawberry gelatin (any brand)
- 2 cups of boiling water
- 1 - 16 ounce package of frozen strawberries
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix the pretzels, 4 1/2 tablespoons of sugar and the melted butter together and spread the mixture evenly to cover the bottom of a 9x13 cake pan. Bake the crust in the oven for 10 minutes until it is lightly toasted. Set it aside to cool.
- In a medium bowl mix the cup of sugar and the cream cheese until it's smooth. Fold in the whipped topping. Smooth this over the cooled crust. Refrigerate this mixture for 30 minutes.
- In another medium bowl mix the gelatin, boiling water and frozen strawberries. The frozen berries take the place of cold water in the gelatin recipe. Remove the cake pan from the refrigerator (after 30 minutes) and, very gently, pour this mixture over the cheesecake. Refrigerate it again for 1 hour to allow it to set.
- Cut this into 3" squares to serve it. Refrigerate immediately any un-served portions.
"THE" book on cheesecake!
The Only Cheesecake Recipe Book You'll Ever Need
Below is the book that wrote the book when it comes to cheesecake. This is Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook which includes Junior's famous recipes for 50 different New York style cheesecakes.
Who's Junior, you ask? Junio's Restaurant is one of the most famous in Brooklyn, NY and it's famous primarily because of its cheesecake. People from around the world make it a special point to seek it out.
In this book, the staff of Junior's reveals to author Art Rosen the secrets to perfect cheesecake. You'll learn from the masters how to master the dessert and then you'll learn how to make those specialty cakes you could only dream about when you were still trying to figure out how to keep your cheesecake from cracking.
Ah, Substitutions!
This is a basic recipe. It really is quite simple and hard to mess up. It's also hard to substitute anything into it but we do have a few options for you.
- As we said above, you can substitute in light cream cheese and light whipped topping for the full flavored, full fat items in the recipe. I wouldn't do it but you certainly can! Do not however use a sugar substitute. It just won't taste right, especially if you're already using lower fat ingredients.
- Substitute in lower salt pretzels if they're your personal preference but don't go with pretzels that are not at all outwardly salted. Salt is an important flavor in this combination of tastes.
- Try this with raspberry Jell-o and fresh or frozen raspberries. We've found it to be reasonably good in my household. On the other hand we were not impressed with the combination of blueberry gelatin and blueberries. To each his own, though. Try it if you're a big fan of blueberries or you just want to see blue/purple cheesecake!
So, would you make this recipe?
Have you made the cheescake?
Cheescake Making Made Easy on Video
Can't get enough great dessert?
Here are a few more great books to try! So many cheesecakes and other great desserts...so little time...
These are the best of the best in dessert books (featuring primarily cake and cheesecake) as judged by reader reviews.Though the book above is my personal favorite (for cheesecake), you just can't go wrong with any of these books.
Did you give this a try? What did you think? Inquiring minds want to know.
