[Sca-cooks] pot-lucks? - Cheesecake!

[Butterflye]

When it comes to potlucks, I'm cheap and easy (though I'm not that as a
rule, LOL!)

Here's my very easy and relatively cheap cheesecake -- this recipe
originally came from Mr. Food, who might still be on tv somewhere, but not
that I've seen lately...

. 3 - 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, room temperature
. 3 eggs
. 3/4 cup sugar (I've also used Splenda with perfect results)
.1 tsp vanilla, or 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp almond extract
. 1 or 2 rolls of your favorite Pillsbury-type cookie dough --how many rolls
depends on how much you want to spend, and how rich you want the cake to be.

To make this really right, you need an electric mixer, but I have done it by
hand in a pinch.

Take a roll of cookie dough and slice it, lay out the slices in a 13 x 9
pan, and press out with fingers so that it's a crust, covering the whole
bottom of the pan.

Mix together the cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Beat well until
mixture is smooth. Spread over cookie dough. Now you can either put it in
the oven, or take another roll of cookie dough and srop my teaspoonfuls all
over the top of the cheese mixture.

Bake at 350º, 30-45 minutes (I've lived in a lot of places, every oven is
different) until the cookies are done on top, and the cheesecake should be
nice and golden. If no cookies on top, make sure cheese top is golden and no
longer shakes in the center.

Turn off the oven but don't immediately remove -- let it cool about 10
minutes. This will help keep the cheesecake from cracking. Of course if it
cracks, it tastes just as good, but it's not as pretty.

If you watch for cream cheese on sale (holiday time it's down to $1 a
package usually) and get inexpensive cookie dough, this can be a delicious
budget-stretcher. When I want to really dazzle the audience, I use the white
chocolate-macadamia chunk cookie dough. But it gets raves from plain old
chocolate chip as well.

YIS
~~ Lorète