Skinny Cheesecake

As I’ve mentioned in many of my recent posts, I’ve gotten an instant pot electric pressure cooker.  When you get an instant pot, and you start researching what you can use it for, there are 2 things that people are very vocal about.  Yogurt, and Cheesecake.  I love yogurt, but it’s cheap and I’m probably not going to go through the trouble of making my own. Cheesecake, however.  Well that’s another story. Challenge Accepted!  I will provide directions below for both oven baking and instant pot baking. I read a bunch of recipes, then made substitutions and switches and crossed my fingers, because you know, cheesecakes are finicky. The results are DELICIOUS.  When you join an instant pot discussion, it becomes clear rather quickly that there is one reigning queen of pressure cooker cheesecake, and her name is “this old gal” so, I took a few tricks from “This old Gal” on how to cook the cheesecake in the instant pot.

Note, I made this in a 7 inch spring form pan so these slices are smaller than an average cheesecake, but still enough to feel like you’re scratching your cheesecake itch.  This is a traditional cheesecake, but if you like the idea of Peanut Butter Cheesecake better, I’ve got that too.  Also, you try this yummy  blueberry orange cheesecake with a gingersnap crust, check out this recipe I posted a while back! 

Ingredients:

Crust:

• 7 whole graham crackers (that’s 7 of the sheets of 4 rectangles).
• 2  TBSP light butter or margarine (i used 50 cal per TBSP)

Filling:

• 16 oz Neufchatel Cheese (sometimes marketed as 1/3 fat cream cheese) Room temp
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup splenda
• just a pinch of salt
• 2 tsp all purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• orange zest from 1/2 an orange
• 3-4 drops of lemon juice (i just used the stuff in the plastic bottle this time but you could use zest from half an actual lemon instead)
• 2 room temperature eggs
• 1 room temperature egg yolk
• 1/4 cup 1% milk

Instructions: 

1. put all the graham crackers into a food processor and pulse until you have fine crumbs.
2. Melt the butter in the microwave for about 25 seconds.
3. Pour melted butter into cracker crumbs and stir until they are all well combined.
4. Spray your spring form pan generously with cooking spray.
5. Pour the crust mixture into the pan and use your fingers to press it evenly across the bottom, and up the sides just about an inch or so.  You can use the bottom of a glass to get a more consistent thickness and texture.
6. Place the pan with the crust inside, into the freezer for 20 minutes to set while you work on making the filling.
7. Once you’ve got your crust in place, it’s time to start making your filling.  It’s important to make sure your cheese is softened pretty well.  It should be very soft and pliable inside the package.
8. Place your cream cheese, sugar, splenda, salt, flour, vanilla extract, orange peel, lemon juice, and milk into a mixing bowl.  Use stand mixer or electric beaters to cream these ingredients together until they are smooth.
9. Add eggs, one at a time, and then yolk.  Mix until just incorporated after each one.
10. Once filling is mixed together, pour it out on top of the crust, and spread it evenly across the pan.

Cook it! 

For the oven:

1. Place your spring form pan on large sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil and fold the sides of the foil around the sides of the pan.
2. Set pan inside a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until the water reaches halfway up the side of the springform pan.
3. Very carefully place the whole contraption into the oven and bake at 325 for 55 minutes.  When the cake is ready, the edges will look done, but about 1 inch in the middle of the cake will still be jiggly.  This is perfect. It’s going to continue cooking in the next step.
4. Turn off oven and prop door open.  Allow the cake to sit in the oven, turned off, door slightly open for 45 minutes.
5. Remove to a cooling rack and let it cool completely before moving to the refrigerator.  Refrigerate 6 hours or overnight before serving.

For the Instant Pot:

1. Pour 1 1/2 cups of water into the bottom of your Instant Pot, and then add the trivet.
2. Place a paper towel over the top of the pan, and then loosely attach a piece of foil over the top to hold the paper towel in place.  Fold the edges of the foil loosely over the sides of the pan. The foil should not be tightly sealing up the pan, just loosely attached so the paper towel stays stretched across the top.  This paper towel will catch any condensation so it doesn’t settle on the top of your cake and ruin the texture.
3. Create a foil sling by placing a large piece of heavy duty aluminum foil (about 2 ft long) on your counter, and folding it longways about 4 times.  So at the end, the foil strip should be about 4 inches wide, and 2 ft long.  Place your spring form pan directly in the center of this aluminum strip and pull the sides of the foil up to the top of the pan.  You’re going to use these pieces of foil as a handle to lift the hot pan out of the pot once cooking is done.
4. Use the “handles” on the foil sling to lower your cake onto the trivet inside the Instant pot.
5. Set the IP to high pressure, manual setting for 32 minutes.
6. Once time is up, allow the Instant pot to sit for 18 minutes (NPR). Do not release any pressure until this 18 minute time frame has passed.  Once your 18 minutes has passed, release any remaining pressure manually.
7. Use handles from the foil sling to remove the pan carefully and place the pan on a cooling rack.
8. Unwrap the top of the cake and discard foil and paper towel.  Allow cake to cool on the cooling rack 1 hour before placing into the refrigerator.
9. Refrigerate 6 hours to overnight before serving.

Makes 8 servings= 247 calories per serving

Editors Note:  My husband likes his cheesecake plain. I like mine with cherry topping.  Since the slices are small, I used 2 tbsp of kroger light cherry pie filling (shown below) to top mine.  That brought my calories up to 273.  My threshold for desserts to be listed on this site as low calorie, is 300 calories or less.  That being said, my husband chose to eat a 1/6th sized serving instead of 1/8th which brought his calories up to 327 with no topping. If you really love cheesecake and you’ve got calories to spare… go for it.  Cut it into 6’s instead of 8’s.

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