Blueberry Cheesecake

My Mom used to make the best blueberry cheesecake this side of the Mississippi; at least that is what she used to say. I was going through her old cook books the other day and came across her recipe for Fresh Blueberry cheesecake. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did as children.

Makes around 10 servings

4 8 ounce packages of cream cheese, softened (we always used Philadelphia Brand® it just tasted the best to us) we needed at least 32 ounces of cream cheese for the cheesecake

1 ½ cups of sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons of lemon juice

Graham cracker crumbs, 1 cup, we would take around five or six cookies and smash them up to get the crumbs enough to fill the cup

½ cup unsalted butter

2 cups of blueberries, these would be the ones that we had picked that day

First we would make the batter, in a large mixing bowl we would set the mixer to a low speed, Mom would add the cream cheese, the sugar, eggs, vanilla and lemon juice, she would mix these ingredients until the texture was extremely smooth and easy to place a spoon in.

While doing this Mom would preheat the oven to 350 degree, and then she would mix the graham crackers , that we had crumbled up, sometimes we would place the graham crackers between two sheets of wax paper one on the top and one on the bottom and use a wooden rolling pin to go over the crackers until they obtained the consistency that we needed for the crust, melted butter using a rubber tipped spatula until the consistency was sufficient to line the bottom of the 8-9inch cake dish. When the crust was in place and the batter was at its smoothest then she would pour the batter into the crust and assure that there were no clumps or if the cream was uneven, she would take the rubber tipped spatula and run it over the top of the cake to assure that it was even

She would place it in the oven and bake for one hour, we would test if the cheese cake was complete by taking a tooth pick and inserting it in center of the cheesecake, if the toothpick came out clean then the cheesecake was done, if it came out creamy then the cheesecake needed to be baked for a few more minutes.

She would remove the cheesecake from the oven and allow it to cool for around an hour to get it to room temperature, and then she would place the cheese cake into the refrigerator overnight to harden. The next morning we would add the blueberries to the top and have the wonderful desert for that evening's dinner.