1.25 cups Splenda for baking (feel free to substitute other heat-tolerant sweeteners)
Four eggs
One tablespoon vanilla extract
Half Cup Plain Greek Yogurt
Crust:
One cup almond flour (add or subtract to get preferred consistency)
Half cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Two tablespoons Splenda for baking
One teaspoon ground cinnamon (Optional – leave out if you don’t like cinnamon; or add more to taste, if preferred)
½ stick butter
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Filling: Bring cream cheese close to room temperature (if you’re in a rush, dump it into a bowl and microwave for 45 seconds or so…it will be fine.) While oven preheats, mix all filling ingredients (stand mixer preferred) until smooth, scraping sides of mixing bowl repeatedly to ensure complete mixing. Feel free to leave the mixer running while you make the crust (next step).
Crust. Melt butter in a sauce pan on stovetop or in a covered bowl in the microwave. Combine and mix all crust ingredients. You want a consistency that does not look either liquidy or powdery. Clumpy is fine. Add almond flour or butter to get to that kind of consistency powdery. Dump crust mixture into the bottom of a springform pan. Use your hands or a rubber spatula to spread evenly into the bottom of the pan and then press into place.
Combine. Lightly oil the inside of the rim of the springform pan. A light coating of spray cooking oil works very well, but you could also spread a thin film of butter or oil . Then pour in the filling mixture. Use a rubber spatula to spread evenly across the crust, edge to edge of the springform pan.
Bake. Place cake directly into the oven (no water bath or other stuff needed). After you close the oven door, turn down the temperature to 200 degrees. Allow the cake to bake for at least an hour—but likely more like one hour and fifteen minutes. If available, use a baking thermometer, and pull it out when the center has hit 145 degrees. Otherwise, it needs to bake until the center stops looking like liquid when moved (it can still jiggle a bit, but it should not look like straight liquid). If you start to see cracks forming in the surface, the cake is nearly done. Large, deep cracks mean it’s gone too long. (This gets easy with practice: If it’s coming out dry / cracked, you’re baking it too long. If it’s coming out liquidy, leave it in a little longer.)
Cool. Remove the cake from the oven and let sit at room temperature until it cools. Then place in the refrigerator for a few hours before slicing. After it’s cool, feel free to top with fruit, if you want to add carbs (you know, before a marathon or something). Otherwise, it’s great plain.
Eat. Eat with abandon. Eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. It has nearly no carbs, and it’s gluten free. Does it have calories? Well, yeah….it’s still four solid pounds of cheese, eggs, butter, yogurt, and nuts. But who counts calories anymore? And it tastes like real cheesecake! There is no tomorrow.
