Cranberry Cheesecake Recipe

Cranberry Cheesecake is a holiday favorite. Bake your own or just add the topping to a premade one. Hint – It’s the cranberry topping that makes it extra special.

Cranberry Cheesecake

Here comes some yummy!! The holidays are all about good food and great times. Are you planning a family gathering this Christmas season? Do you do a fancy Christmas ham, prime rib, roasted duck, or something simple like a roast chicken? Inquiring minds want to know. Do you also provide the desserts or do you ask your guests to bring a dessert? I generally volunteer to bring a dessert and if you’re like me, then you’ll want to show up and bring this amazing Cranberry Cheesecake! It’s a show stopper  for sure!

This cranberry cheesecake would also be perfect to bring to an office pot luck party. When I worked in corporate America we had quite a few pot lucks around the holidays. This huge cheesecake would totally serve 12 – 16 people depending on big you sliced it.

And who wouldn’t want a slice of this beauty?

Have you taken the family our for a tour of the holiday lights yet? We have plans to get into DC to see some of the lights. For me, it’s the best part of the season. All the lights make the early nights worth it! What is your favorite part of the holidays? The songs, or the gifts or the parties??

Wanna know what I dislike the most?

Wrapping all the presents. UGH!

I try my best to keep up with gift wrapping. I definitely don’t let them pile up until Christmas eve! Oy vey! My mother-in-law does and it drives me nuts. The woman will stay up until 2 am wrapping presents and making them so pretty. She is a gift wrapping perfectionist and it puts me to shame!

Do you wrap up your gifts all fancy with pretty bows and ribbons and accessories and tags and bling?? Not me! You’ll be lucky if you get a plastic bow stick on it.

Basically, I can’t add all that fancy stuff because the cats will eat it. And then I’ll find it a few hours later….. and that’s just no good!

Tips and Tricks

1. 1. 1. Start with wrapping the springform pan in foil. Cheesecakes need a water bath to help bake the cheesecake evenly. We wrap the pan with heavy foil and place the entire pan into a larger baking pan with hot water. The springform pan needs to be watertight to keep the water out and the crust crisp. No cracked tops wanted here.
      2. Get a springform pan – obviously. I love this Wilton 9-inch Bake it Better Springform Pan that you can get at your local Wal-Mart store. (You can get everything you need for this recipe at Wal-Mart.) A springform pan has removable sides that make it very easy to remove the cheesecake for serving. I used a large cake lifter to get the cheesecake off the pan base.
      3. Use room temperature cream cheese. Let your cream cheese, and in this case Mascarpone cheese, come to room temperature before beating it. Soft cream cheese will whip up smoothly. If the cream cheese is too cold, you’ll end up with lumps and nobody likes a lumpy cheesecake.
      4. Don’t over mix your batter. Cheesecake is supposed to be thick, not airy. If you end up adding too much air to the batter, the cheesecake will balloon up too much while baking and then fall when cooling. The result will be a cracked top.
      5. Allow the cheesecake to cool overnight. You’ll pull the cheesecake out of the oven when it still has a slight jiggle in the center. It’ll seem undercoated, but it’s not. The cheesecake will keep cooking while it’s cooling. Refrigerating the cheesecake overnight will help it evenly solidify and be creamy for serving.
      6. Bake ahead and freeze it. You think that Cheesecake Factory has fresh cheesecakes all day, every day? Think again. They freeze it and you can too. For this cheesecake, bake it, refrigerate it, then wrap it tightly and securely and freeze it up to three months. Thaw it covered in the fridge for a night and add the topping before serving. It’s so easy!

Here’s a few more cheesecakes that are perfect for the holiday!

 

Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake

 

Strawberry Brownie Cheesecake

 

Chocolate Cheesecake with Praline Sauce