Secretly Reasonable Blueberry Cheesecake

Cheesecakes are not often spotted in my kitchen. It's not that I don't like them, they just need a lot of perishable high fat ingredients that I don't often have on hand. They're also pretty murderous for your general cardiac health.

But this cheesecake is different. This cheesecake is, dare I say, healthy cheesecake [or at the very least healthy-ish].

It's light and creamy and luscious and fluffy and made mostly of nonfat greek yogurt.

Wait...NONfat?

I looked up a few basic cheesecake recipes online and all of them started with 5 packages of cream cheese. There are 72 grams of fat in each package of cream cheese. In EACH ONE! And that's only one ingredient. Yuck.

This recipe swaps out nearly all of the cream cheese for nonfat greek yogurt. Non fat greek yogurt is not only fat free and full of healthy stuff, it also has a whopping 23g of protein in one cup.

And let me tell you, honestly, I promise, this really tastes like cheesecake.

So why not replace all the cream cheese? Because sometimes a little bit of the bad stuff goes a long way, it really makes it taste like the real deal, and I think you should be able to have your [cheese]cake and eat it too [ugh! sorry I couldn't resist!]

There are even more things you could do to this recipe to make it better for you. You could cut the butter in the crust in half, use reduced fat cream cheese, halve the crust recipe, use a layer of granola for the crust or even make it crustless [the crust accounts for a third of the calories and nearly half the fat].

So enjoy this light and fluffy dessert that won't induce immediate cardiac arrest.

Nutrition facts per slice if you cut in into 12 slices:
Calories: 300  Fat: 13.5g  Sugar: 31g  Protein: 7g
Nutrition facts per slice, crustless:
Calories: 200  Fat: 6.5g  Sugar: 22.5g  Protein: 6g

Secretly Reasonable Blueberry Cheesecake

Crust:

1 sleeve graham crackers (9 crackers), finely crushed

6 tbsp melted butter

1/3 c sugar

Filling:

1 8 oz package cream cheese, softened

2 c nonfat greek yogurt

3/4 c sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp fresh grated lemon zest

2 tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

1. Mix the graham crackers, 1/3c sugar, and butter. Press into 9" tart pan and bake at 375 degrees for 7 minutes. Remove and cool.
2. Beat cream cheese in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add yogurt and beat until well combined.
3. Add sugar at beat until well incorporated. Add eggs and beat well.
4. Add vanilla, zest, flour and salt. Beat until nice and smooth.
5. Pour filling into cooled crust. [Depending on the height of your pan, you might not need nearly all of it.] Scatter blueberries evenly over the top. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 1 hour. Center will still be jiggly when done. Turn off the oven, open the door a few inches and cool for half an hour. Remove from oven and cool all the way.
6. Cut into 12 slices and serve.