Bailey's Irish Cream Cheesecake

Redsie's Note:

This is a wonderful cheesecake - it tastes sinful but it is very light. I made it for a brunch and nobody could believe it was under 300 calories! It's a Rose Reisman recipe (another one of her winning recipes!)

• Total Time: 1 hrs 20 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 1 hrs

Ingredients:

Serves: 16

Yield: 1.0 cake

Crust

• 2 ¼ cups chocolate wafer crumbs
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Filling

• 2 cups smooth 5% fat ricotta cheese
• ¾ cup low-fat yogurt
• 4 ounces light cream cheese
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg white
• 2 tablespoons Baileys Irish Cream or 2 tablespoons other coffee liqueur
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
• ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Topping

• 1 ¼ cups low-fat sour cream
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon Baileys Irish Cream

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F Spray a 9-inch springform pan with vegetable spray.
2. Make crust: in a bowl, stir together wafer crumbs, water and oil until mixed. Pat mixture onto the bottom and side of the prepared pan.
3. Make filling: in a food processor, combine ricotta cheese, yogurt, cream cheese, egg, egg white, liqueur,vanilla, sugar and flour; purée until smooth. Pour the mixture into the prepared crust.
4. Place a pan of hot water on the bottom rack of the over. Bake the cheesecake in the centre of the oven for 50 minutes. The cake will still be quite loose.
5. Make topping: in a bowl, stir together sour cream, sugar and liqueur. Carefully pour a thin stream of this mixture over top of the hot cheesecake, smoothing it with a knife. Return the cake to the oven and bake for 10 minutes. The topping will be loose and will set as the cake cools.
6. Run a butter knife around the edge of the cake. Let it cool on a wire rack until it is room temperature. Chill.

Reviews

[LilKiwiChicken]

Let me start by saying that the filling is a definite 5 stars - light but very tasty, you cannot tell that you haven't used 100% full fat cream cheese etc. I had to bake it a bit longer than the instructions suggested (put the sour cream topping on after 60 minutes, the filling still had not set in the middle, the sour cream topping was on for 20 minutes before the cake looked like it had set properly). The base gets 3 stars - it just didn't seem to hold together as well as a "normal" base (by that I mean a base with melted butter). The texture was a bit crumbly & detracted from the very very very yummy filling. I think next time I will use the same filling but use butter instead of oil & water for the base. Thanks for this great recipe!