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Savory Herbed Cheesecake

This is a way to serve cheese to a lot of people very easily and inexpensively. Be sure to read the note at the end of the recipe about making a smaller size unless you're serving this to a huge group.
Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

  • 3 8 oz . packages cream cheese
  • 3 tablespoons flour
  • 4 jumbo or extra large eggs
  • 1 tsp . salt
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice*
  • Grated zest from one lemon if you used a fresh lemon for above; otherwise use 1/8 tsp. lemon oil*
  • 2-3 tsp . Italian seasoning depending on how strong of an herb flavor you want
  • 1/2 cup chopped parsley Italian parsley would work best.
  • 1 cup freshly-grated Parmesan or Pecorino/Romano cheese
  • 4 shallots finely minced I have also used red onion, about 1/2 --shallots have a more refined flavor, I guess, but it doesn't really matter.

Instructions

  1. Use your food processor to mix up the filling and pour it into a 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 300 deg. until center reaches 160, 35-40 minutes. Chill, remove from the springform pan, and serve with crackers. People go nuts over this.

Recipe Notes

*I just use bottled lemon and lime juice in my recipes, sorry to say. Actually, I'm not all that sorry, since I did a blind taste test between bottled and fresh at some point and honestly couldn't tell the difference. Keeping fresh limes and lemons on hand is a massive pain, and the zest and juice requirements for a recipe don't always match up with a whole fruit. And some recipes call for zest and not for any juice at all! What are you supposed to do then? So I keep the bottled stuff on hand plus a magical ingredient called "citrus oil." The item I keep on hand is Boyajian Inc Boyajian Assorted Pure Citrus Oil, Set of 3. This is a three-pack of lemon, lime and orange oils. Use them very sparingly! They are extremely strong. And they keep in the fridge forever. No more moldy lemons!

Note on size: Although people love this stuff, they don't eat a lot of it, mainly because it's so rich and flavorful. I finally decided that I needed to make smaller ones, so I plan from now on to make 6" cakes, especially if I'm making another type of savory cheesecake to go with it. That size is roughly half the area of a 9" pan, so you can just divide the batter between two pans (if you want to have two cheesecakes, perhaps one for each of two serving tables) or just cut the above amounts in half and make one small cheesecake. The 6" pan is going to give you a slightly thicker cheesecake, but it will be smaller and so should bake faster. Check for doneness at 20 minutes and go on from there.