In my opinion, the best desserts are chocolate, but key lime desserts come in a close second. This is a great Summer treat with a twist on your typical key lime pie. I took them to a picnic recently and it was great to have a dessert you could eat with your fingers and wasn’t messy.
This was also a really fun recipe to make, especially the part where you add the food coloring and then make the swirls. So if you have kids, that would be a fun thing to let them do to help with the cooking.
One thing you should know about this recipe, is it involves a lot of waiting: chill the curd, chill the batter, bake, let cool, then chill some more. The time I was actually preparing and cooking was not that much, but if you add in all the chilling in the refrigerator, it turned into a multi-hour process. So you might want to make it a day before you’re planning to eat it. But all the waiting just made eating them that much sweeter!
Ingredients
- 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
- 8 tbsp (1 US stick) unsalted butter, melted
- 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1/3 cup plus 4 tbsp. lime juice
- 2 bricks (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs plus one large egg white
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup prepared lime curd, divided
- Liquid green food coloring
- Liquid yellow food coloring
Directions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 10×10 pan with parchment that overhangs the edges. Mix the butter and graham crackers together and press into the bottom of the pan evenly. Bake crust for 5 minutes and allow to cool completely.
- Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer. Slowly add the eggs and yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Pour in lime juice and mix again. Expect the mixture to look curdled, this is normal.
- Cook the mixture over medium heat in a saucepan until it looks smooth (no longer curdled.) Increase the heat slightly and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. Clip a thermometer (if you have one) to the side of the pan and cook until the mixture reaches 170 degrees.
- Remove the curd from the heat. Transfer the curd to a bowl and press plastic wrap on the surface of the lime curd to keep a skin from forming. Chill the curd in the refrigerator. The curd will thicken further as it cools. Covered tightly, it will keep in the refrigerator for a week and in the freezer for 2 months.
- Beat cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl with mixer on medium high speed until smooth. Beat in eggs on low speed, 1 at a time. Beat in sour cream and vanilla, then flour just until blended. Remove 1 cup of batter and reserve. Pour the rest of the batter over the crust.
- Tint 3/4 cup of lime curd with the liquid food coloring until lime-rind green. You will use a few drops of both green and yellow food coloring.
- Mix 1/2 cup of tinted lime curd with the 1 cup of reserved batter. Place spoonfuls or dollops of this mixture in no particular fashion on top of the plain cheesecake batter. Dollop the remaining 1/4 cup of lime curd across the previous mixture. Use skewer or toothpick to swirl the mixtures together to create a marbleized effect.
- Bake for 35 minutes at 325 degrees F. Let cool completely in pan then refrigerate. Lift cheesecake out of the pan with parchment overhang. Cut into bars before serving.
Source: Confessions of a Cookbook Queen
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