Peanut Butter & Jelly Cheesecake

by Allie on March 30, 2012

Cheesecake is creamy and delicious. Peanut butter is creamy and delicious. Combine the two and what you achieve is magical. And when you add jelly? The results are edible nirvana. Mmmm.

When my friend Cindy first told me about Project PB&J, I was both excited and nervous. I wanted to be supportive of her new blog Once Upon a Loaf and I wanted to participate in the contest, but I have never adapted or created a recipe. At least not for baking. Sure, I get creative with my cooking, but that’s different. Cooking is something I do regularly. Baking…not so much. On those rare occasions that I do bake, it usually comes out of a box. Or worse, one of those break-and-bake cookie packages. (Don’t judge!) There’s very little room for error with those types of things. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve baked anything from scratch since I was in middle school, with the exception of a bread-making class I attended last week. But, I was determined to participate and finally launch the long-debated food blog, and so I got to brainstorming.

Several brainstorming ideas, a week of web design, and one successful recipe adaptation later, I decided I was ready to try creating a recipe of my own. Helloooooo cheesecake!

Overall I’d say the cheesecake was a huge success. Yes, I overdid the outsides a bit. I’ll blame my ancient oven which looks like it is from the 1970s or 1980s. It took 65 minutes for the center of my cheesecake to barely moved when touched. Just to be on the safe side, I wrote the recipe to say 50 minutes or until done, so that you can check the cheesecake earlier on and see how your oven handles it. I don’t want any of you to make the same mistakes I did and have to lose out on a single bite of cheeesecake-y goodness because the outside was overdone. Trust me, the center of this cheesecake is PURE GOLD. Take it from the girl who had the cheesecake coma yesterday.

My only other words of advice are to make sure you don’t allow the jelly to get too close to the edge of your cheesecake. If the jelly touches the springform pan, it will overcook and/or glue your cheesecake to the pan, which makes it very difficult to dislodge your cheesecake. You will end up with broken bits of cheesecake where the jelly decided to cling to the pan. Or perhaps the pan got a taste and decided to be greedy and keep some of the cheesecake for itself. Either way, you don’t want your cheesecake to have little bits missing. It isn’t pretty. Now get baking!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cheesecake

By Allie Published: March 30, 2012

Yield: 1 cheesecake

The classic combination of peanut butter and jelly in a creamy cheesecake.

Ingredients

24 Nutter Butter cookies
4 Tbsp butter melted
1 cup sugar granulated
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups jelly
2 eggs large
2 egg whites

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Wrap outside and bottom of 9" springform pan with aluminum foil and spray the inside with nonstick cooking spray.
Crush nutter butter cookies into crumbs, then mix in the melted butter. Press the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan and 1/2 inch up the sides. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes, then cool on a rack.
Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees.
Combine sugar and cream cheese with a mixer at medium speed, until smooth. Add in the peanut butter and vanilla. Add whole eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Microwave 1 cup of jelly in 30 second intervals, stirring between each interval, until it becomes smooth (about 2 minutes). Pour the jelly on top of crust and smooth out, leaving a 1 inch border of crust.
Place 2 egg whites in a bowl and mix at high speed until the eggs become frothy. Fold beaten egg whites into the cream cheese mixture, then mix on low speed to blend.
Pour cream cheese mixture over the crust and smooth out.
Microwave 1 cup of jelly as before, then pour over the cheesecake and swirl with the tip of a knife.
Bake at 325 for 50 minutes or until the center of the cheesecake barely moves when touched.
Turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to cool in the closed oven for 15 minutes, then remove cheesecake from the oven, and run a knife around the outside edge.
Chill the cheesecake in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.