eggnog cheesecake

Good morning and happy one week until Christmas!

I’ve been trying to squeeze in a lot of crazy travel before I’m off for a week which means I’ve been eating too much Panera on the road and not enough delicious food cooked in my own kitchen.

Last night, though, the GS and I hosted our first adult DINNER PARTY at our new house. I was brainstorming menus for this all week and so excited to cook up a storm.

Typically when you’re entertaining you aren’t supposed to try out new recipes because then if they are terrible you’ve inadvertently punished your guests by serving them inedible food. But I figured our friends wouldn’t mind.

And luckily everything turned out okay! I’m going to share one other thing I made as an appetizer but I think this cheesecake was the most popular girl at the party.

Truth: I’ve never made cheesecake before, and had also never consumed eggnog before. This had the potential to be disastrous, like in my very early blogging days where I spent too much time and money making goat cheese and beet ravioli only to discover that beets taste like dirt.

But, even though I had never had it, eggnog sounded so festive to me so I had to give it a shot. And it was surprisingly easy! So if you’re a baking novice, a cheesecake virgin, unsure about eggnog- just give it a shot!

If you’re lactose intolerant, maybe skip it.

Eggnog Cheesecake

slightly adapted from Creative Culinary

for the crust:

1 sleeve graham crackers

12-15 ginger snap cookies

1/4 cup brown sugar

6 tablespoons melted butter

for the filling:

32 oz. cream cheese (yep, that’s 4 bricks)

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups eggnog

splash of bourbon (optional)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups powdered sugar

3 tbs flour

1 tsp ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, combine the graham crackers, ginger snaps, and brown sugar until you have fine crumbs. Add the melted butter and pulse until you have a wet sand-like consistency.

Spray a springform pan with nonstick cooking spray, then press the crumbs in to form a crust. I actually added foil to the inside of my pan, too, as an extra precaution. But it probably wasn’t necessary. Bake the crust for 5-7 minutes.

While the crust is baking, whip the cream cheese (can’t wait to get my stand mixer for these tasks). Add the eggs in one at a time, then the eggnog, bourbon, and vanilla (I mixed these last 3 ingredients together and poured it in). Sift together the powdered sugar, flour, and nutmeg and fold into the wet ingredients. Pour into the crust and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Move to the refrigerator to chill, ideally overnight. Mine only chilled for about 6 hours because, being a cheesecake novice, I didn’t realize that this was a pretty major step. BUT it was still set pretty well and no one complained so if you’re in a pinch apparently 6 hours will do the trick.