I love making cream cheese cake. Usually, when cream cheese goes on sale I like to purchase it to make this cake. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I purchased cream cheese on sale for $0.99 each, 16oz  sour cream for $0.88 and eggs for $0.95 a dozen, and decided to make cream cheese cake for my family’s Thanksgiving meal. The graham cracker was purchased few months ago for less than $1 a box the generic brand. As they were about to expire in my pantry, I ground them with my granite mortar and pestle and put in Ziploc bags and stored in the freezer. I moved one bag from the freezer to the fridge the night before baking.

I don’t cook the traditional Thanksgiving meal, I don’t generally cook turkey. I cook what my family would enjoy eating. For Thanksgiving 2018, I decided to make Italian sausage, brat, and wieners sandwiches, with French fries as side for meal, cream cheese cake and ice cream for dessert. We would have Thanksgiving lunch. For dinner we will just eat the leftover. We can say that we have our own Thanksgiving tradition.

Below is my cream cheese cake recipe. I made it the night before Thanksgiving to let it cool uncovered overnight in the fridge.

I made the cream cheese cake plain. However, I have homemade apple sauce in the fridge and raspberries in the freezer. I could make raspberries sauce and offer the apple sauce and raspberry sauce for topping options for the cream cheese cake.

 

Cream Cheese Cake 

Ingredients:

4 Cream Cheese–8 Oz ea.

1 Cup Sugar

4 Eggs

16 oz. Sour Cream

1 Cup Milk
½ Stick Butter or more
2 Cups Ground Graham Crackers

 

Directions:

Get all the ingredients out of the fridge about one hour before the start.

Preheat the oven at 300 degree F.

Use the half stick of butter to butter 9’’ * 5’’ baking pan and put the remaining butter in a mixing bowl. Note that there would be about 2 cups of leftover cake mixture if the above size baking pan is used.

 

Add the ground cracker to the mixing bowl and mix by hand. Use more butter if necessary to mix the cracker into a crumbly mixture. Pour the mixture in the baking pan and level it. Press it down with a fist until it is firmly pressed against the baking pan. Set aside.

 

In another mixing bowl, add the cream cheese cake and sugar. With a hand mixer, beat it for about 30 seconds or more.

Add the eggs and mix in. Use the electric hand mixer to mix all the ingredients well.

Add the sour cream and mix in for few seconds.

Add the milk and mix it in. Do not over mix with the electric mixer. Turn the hand mixer off. Use a spatula to stir the mixture well and pour in the baking pan until just full.

There might be some leftover mixture. If so, it could be put in buttered two-cup glass bowl.

Bake the cake at 300 degree F for one hour.

Turn the oven off after the baking time is over and let the cake in the oven for one hour.

Take out of the oven. Let the cake cool out of the oven for few more minutes and put in the fridge to cool completely uncovered.

Cover the cream cheese cake and serve it when ready.

 

My baking pan was completely full and I put the baking pan in a cast iron baking pan before putting it in the oven. My cream cheese cake baked without cracking.