Update: Having served my cheesecake tonight, I now remember why I started putting the parchment paper on the bottom: the crust was glued to the pan, and nobody could get it off. (They did gobble down the cheesecake part.)

First, a bit of a warning: I don’t make this often, so I’ve put some cautionary notes next to a couple of things that weren’t in my recipe originally.

This is a heavy, rich cheesecake. It is not the chiffon kind. This recipe is for a 10″ cake, but it can be cut in half and baked in an 8″ pan.

It requires a spring-form pan.

Do not open the oven until the cake has cooled. You don’t want to risk having the cake split.

Ingredients:

Crust:

• Use ¾ of a 13.5 oz. box of graham cracker crust crumbs, following the recipe on the box. [This is one place that I ran into trouble. My notes, if I’d followed them, would have made a 16″ crust. Apparently the manufacturers have been playing games with the box sizes.]

Cake:

• 2½ lb. cream cheese, warmed to room temperature
• 1¾ cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp. flour
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ½ cup heavy cream
• rind of 2 lemons
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 6 eggs
• 2 additional egg yolks

Preparation:

1. Peheat oven to 550° F.
2. Grease sides only of spring-form pan
3. Optional: Line bottom of pan with parchment paper [This is another place where I ran into trouble. The first time I did this, I traced the pan onto the paper and cut it to fit inside. Since the whole point is to make it easy to slide the cake off the pan and onto a cake plate, I thought it would be a good idea to leave some corners hanging out. Then it occurred to me that the unprotected corners might catch fire. I put a piece of parchment paper into the 550° oven, and catch fire it did. If you do use the parchment paper, make sure it will all be protected by the cake pan.]
4. Prepare crust and press to bottom only of the pan
5. Freeze crust
6. In large mixer bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy
7. In small bowl, mix together sugar, flour, salt, lemon rind, lemon juice, and vanilla [Don’t bother with the mixer; it doesn’t take much effort to do it with a fork.]
8. Add contents of small bowl slowly to large bowl, beating until smooth
9. Add eggs, one at a time (or just make soup of the eggs and add it slowly, it’s a lot easier than doing them one by one) while beating
10. Add heavy cream, while beating
11. Pour into pan
12. Bake at 550° for 12 minutes
13. Lower oven temperature to 250°, and bake an additional hour
14. Turn off oven, but do not open it
15. Leave the cake in the oven, undisturbed, until is has cooled to room temperature (this will take 3 – 4 hours)
16. Remove cake from oven (if it is still a tiny bit warm, you haven’t ruined anything so long as it hasn’t split)
17. Run knife around side of pan
18. Remove side of pan and chill