Cranberry Cheesecake Squares 5.01 Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller

“I want half of that cranberry square.” “Okay.” “Kirk, sit.” “I’m good.” “You can’t eat standing up like that.”

Ingredients:

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs

• 6 tbps butter, melted

• 3 cups cranberries (I used frozen)

• ½ cup water

• 1 tbsp lemon juice

• ½ cup granulated sugar (for cranberry filling)

• 16 oz cream cheese, softened

• 1 cup sour cream

• ½ cup heavy cream

• 1 cup granulated sugar (for cheesecake filling)

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 3 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Combine the graham cracker crumbs and melted butter in a medium mixing bowl.

3. Grease and line a 9x9 inch baking dish with parchment paper. You don’t have to line the dish, but if you leave some extra paper over the sides, it’s easier to remove the cheesecake squares after baking.

4. Transfer the crumb mixture to the prepared baking dish and pack to form a crust.

5. Bake the crust at 350 F for 10 minutes. Then remove from the oven and allow to cool.

6. Meanwhile, prepare the cranberry filling by adding the cranberries, water, lemon juice, and sugar to a medium saucepan and place over medium heat.

7. Allow the sugar to dissolve and simmer the mixture for about 10 minutes.

8. Remove from the heat and either transfer to a blender or use an immersion blender to break down the cranberries. Reserve about ¼ of the mixture to serve. Note: I blended the cranberry mixture only a little bit before reserving ¼ to serve so that there were some chunks remaining. I fully blended the remaining ¾ mixture until smooth.

9. Set the cranberry mixture aside to cool then prepare the cheesecake filling by adding the cream cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla to a large mixing bowl.

10. Cream together the cheesecake mixture until smooth. Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing after each egg.

11. Pour the cream cheese mixture onto the prepared crust.

12. Add the cranberry mixture on top in large spoonfuls (see photo below).

13. Using a skewer or a knife, marble the cranberry mixture into the cheesecake mixture by dragging the utensil through the batter.

14. Place the baking dish in a large baking dish that’s big enough to hold the baking dish with your cheesecake. Carefully add water into the larger baking dish to fill about 2 inches high. This will help prevent your cheesecake from cracking.

15. Place the large baking dish into the oven and bake at 350 for about 70-80 minutes.

16. The cheesecake will be ready when it’s a dark golden color and the center jiggles just slightly when shaken.

17. Allow the cheesecake to cool to room temperature before removing from the larger baking dish and the water and placing it in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours to set. I chilled mine overnight.

18. Using the parchment paper, slide the cheesecake out of the smaller baking dish once it has set.

19. Cut into 9 even squares and serve with the remaining cranberry mixture on top.

Start by adding a few dollops of the cranberry mixture to marble so you don't add too much at the beginning.

Well hello, season 5! I’m so excited to be starting another season of this project. I have some really fun dishes planned, and I can’t wait to share them with all of you! For this dish, all I had to go off of was a cranberry square. While Kirk and Lulu do share this cranberry square at breakfast, I couldn’t help but make cheesecake squares, even though that’s not technically a breakfast food. Well you know what? Who made up the rules on what we can and can’t have for breakfast? If we want to have cheesecake for breakfast, I say go for it!

This is what your cheesecake should look like after marbling.

If you’ve been around here for a while, you may remember my continued struggle of finding ingredients that are out of season when I get to a particular episode. Some stand out moments were having to make apple cider in spring for Sookie’s cider ice cream and trying to find peaches in fall for the pilot episode. In fact, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a cranberry dish to make in spring. When I made Sookie’s pretzel basket, I also made all the sauces to go in it. In the episode, she makes a cranberry pineapple chutney, but I wrote down raspberry in my notes. I decided it was fine because cranberries weren’t in season, so I wouldn’t have to try to track some down.

If you wanted to, you could just make a circular cheesecake with this recipe, I just had to make them squares for Lulu!

Well here we are a little over a year later, and the time came for me to find out-of-season cranberries. I decided to just buy frozen, but even those were difficult to track down. Luckily, I found some at Central Market. This is the second time Central Market has come through for me in finding ingredients that are out of season—the last time being when I needed chestnuts in July for Sookie’s chestnut and pancetta stuffing! Frozen cranberries worked just fine in making a cross between a jam and a pie filling to marble into this cheesecake.

Happy Cooking from the Hollow!

If you missed what I made for a season 4 bonus dish, you can catch up here!

Would you share one of these cranberry squares with your partner or would you want it all to yourself?