Variations on a Theme–Chiffon Cheesecakes

My grandmother had a good thing a’goin’!

Sometime in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s my grandmother came up with a lemon cheesecake recipe. It was light and fluffy and a bit tangy. She tweaked it into the following:

2 sticks butter
8 oz cream cheese
2 C sugar
2 large cans cream, chilled (Pet or Carnation evaporated milk)
3 small lemon Jell-O
1 1/3 C hot water
Graham Cracker Crust
Mix cream cheese and sugar together. Add the water to the Jell-O and set aside. Add cream cheese and sugar to the Jell-O and whip until blended. Whip the cream one at a time and add to the mixture.
Stir all together and pour into crust.
Chill, covered with foil, in the refrigerator.

That recipe leaves out a good bit of information. Like that this recipe fills a 12″ x 18″ pan. Or that if the evaporated milk isn’t very very very cold, it hardly whips. Or that it takes a box of graham cracker crumbs to make a crust that large. This is frequently the way with vintage recipes – not everything is written down.

I’ve tweaked and updated the recipe and morphed it into the following versions – with, I think, easy to follow directions. There are future plans for a chocolate version and hopes for a blueberry version.

Lemon Chiffon Cheesecake

Lime Chiffon Cheesecake

Orange Creamsicle Cheesecake

Whipped Cream made from Evaporated Milk

 

 

One comment on “Variations on a Theme–Chiffon Cheesecakes

  1. Hi Jim, You suggested I show you my follow up results after refurbishing my little Seachrist 4 qt jar cooker/canner. Well, I put a 3 part jiggler weight and a new steam guage dial on the lid and left the antique steam relief valve. The old gauge, I thought was really neat compared to the new one, oh well. Since the canner is not compatible with my glass top stove I moved out side to the garage with open doors and used this little jewel on a turkey propane cooker. All went very well and I canned 6 pts of baby potatoes with onions and 4 pts of sweet orange carrots. The jiggler and the dial was one pound off with the jiggler starting to wiggle at 12 pounds of pressure. It is amazing to me that this little jewel is 106 years old and works as it did for our great grand mother’s time. I have included pictures and I hope they will come through for you.
    Thank you for your help and suggestions.
    Ruth Amy James/cannaholic

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