Peanut Butter Cheesecake

My husband doesn’t get excited much about food.  But, there are 2 things he loves:  Peanut Butter, and Cheesecake, and it’s Valentines Day–so there I found myself last night, making peanut butter cheesecake, which he ate for breakfast this morning.  I used PB2 in this recipe, which is a great way to get peanut butter flavor without all the added calories of peanut butter.  If you’re not familiar with PB2, it’s a peanut product that is pressed and the oils are removed to decrease the caloric value.  It’s great for baking, and in fact I have used it before in this yummy peanut butter pie.  If you prefer a more traditional cheescake, check out this recipe for my skinny NY style cheesecake!

Again, the recipe itself is mostly mine, but the cooking technique is based on tips from This Old Gal when using the Instant Pot.  I hope you enjoy it.

Editors Note: This recipe was made in a 7 inch spring form cheesecake pan.  Your slices are a little smaller than you’d get from a traditional 10 inch pan.  However, this recipe is meant for the smaller pan and you won’t get the same results if you try to stretch this to a 10 inch.

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
• 4 TBSP PB2  +1 TBSP for topping later
• 2 room temperature eggs
• 1 room temperature egg yolk
• 1/4 cup 1% milk
• 1 TBSP strawberry preserves for topping

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, PB2, 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. Complete this step before adding topping.

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.  Complete this step before adding topping.

For Topping:

1. Use 2 small contaners, and place 1 TBSP of PB2 in one, and 1 TBSP of strawberry preserves or jam in the other.
2. Add about 3/4 TBSP of water to each, and stir until well mixed.
3. Pour strawberry mixture into a small ziplock bag, and pour PB2 mixture into another small ziplock bag.
4. Cut a very tiny tip off of one corner of each ziplock bag, and drizzle the PB2 and Strawberry preserves over the top of the cake.

Makes 8 servings= 271 calories per serving (with topping)

Tags: instant pot cheesecake, low cal cheesecake, low calorie peanut butter dessert, pb2 cheesecake, pb2 recipes, peanut butter cheesecake, skinny cheesecake