This Raspberry Cheesecake Has Raspberry in EVERY Bite

My raspberry cheesecake is swirled with fresh raspberry flavor throughout. It’s baked on a classic graham cracker crust (though Oreo works too!) without a water bath!

Recipe: https://sugarspunrun.com/raspberry-cheesecake/

Ingredients
Raspberry Sauce
12 oz raspberries, fresh or frozen (about 2 ½ cups) (340g)
¼ cup granulated sugar (50g)
¼ cup water (60ml)
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
Crust
1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs (170g)
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar (25g)
1 Tablespoon light brown sugar, firmly packed
7 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (100g)
Cheesecake
24 oz cream cheese, softened (use brick-style full fat cream cheese) (680g)
1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
½ cup sour cream (120g)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs, room temperature preferred

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases from the links below.
Saucepan (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/31UNJBy
Fine mesh strainer (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/2mKKygA
Springform pan (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/2TdTSbT
Mixing bowls (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/2C47vQx

Instructions
00:00 Introduction
For the sauce
00:19 Prepare the sauce first so it has time to cool while you prepare the cheesecake. In a small saucepan, combine raspberries, sugar, water, and lemon juice over medium/low heat. Stir frequently, and cook until the berries release their juices (will take several minutes).
01:15 Increase heat to medium and bring mixture to a simmer while stirring constantly. Cook for several minutes until the berries break down and the sauce deepens in color and is slightly thickened (it will thicken only slightly).
02:00 Remove from heat and pour through a fine mesh strainer into a heat proof bowl. Measure out 2 Tablespoons of your seeds left in the strainer and add them back to the sauce, discard the rest.
02:44 Allow the mixture to cool while you prepare the crust and the cheesecake.
For the crust
02:54 Preheat oven to 325F (165C).
03:04 In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the graham cracker crumbs, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. Add the melted butter until crumbs are all moistened.
04:06 Press the graham cracker mixture evenly into the bottom and up the sides of a 9” springform pan. Use the bottom of a glass or measuring cup to help you. Set crust aside as you prepare your cheesecake.
For the Cheesecake
04:33 Combine cream cheese and sugar in a large mixing bowl and use an electric mixer to stir together until smooth, creamy, and completely lump free.
05:28 Add sour cream and vanilla extract and stir on low speed until combined.
05:53 In a small bowl, lightly beat one egg and add it to the cheesecake batter, stirring on low speed until egg is just combined. Repeat with the remaining eggs, then scrape the sides and bottom of bowl to ensure all ingredients are thoroughly combined.
Assembly
07:18 Pour half of the cheesecake batter evenly over the prepared crust. Take about ⅓ cup (80ml) of the cooled raspberry sauce and pour evenly over the batter.
08:00 Gently dollop the remaining cheesecake batter evenly over the raspberry sauce and smooth it with a spatula.
08:09 Drizzle with another ⅓ cup of raspberry sauce over the surface and use a toothpick or knife to swirl over the cheesecake. Reserve the rest of the sauce for serving (store covered in the refrigerator).
08:45 Transfer to center rack of 325F (165C) preheated oven for 45-55 minutes. The center of the cheesecake will be jiggly but the cheesecake should be mostly set.
09:06 When cheesecake is finished baking, turn off the oven, crack the door open a few inches and let cheesecake cool in the oven for 1 hour (this will help prevent cracks).
09:20 After 1 hour, remove from the oven and allow to cool at room temperature for an hour or until no longer warm. Once cooled, transfer to refrigerator to chill for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight.
09:40 Serve, topped with reserved raspberry sauce (we serve the raspberry sauce on the side so people can add as much or as little as they’d like).

Notes
Storing
I store my cheesecake in the springform pan that it’s baked in. Once it’s cooled, cover with plastic wrap to avoid absorbing any odors from the fridge. Will keep for up to 5 days in the refrigerator or may be frozen for up to several months.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sugarspunrun/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sugarspun_sam
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sugarspunrun
Email List: https://sugarspunrun.com/subscribe/

Hey, it’s Sam from Sugar Spun Run, and today we’re making a raspberry cheesecake. So I got a couple of requests for this recipe. I’m really excited about it because when I developed it, I didn’t want to just do a plain cheesecake with raspberries on top.

Sure, that’s delicious, but I really wanted to infuse raspberry flavor throughout, so that’s exactly what we did. And that’s where we’re going to be starting today with our raspberries. So we’re gonna be cooking down raspberries to make our own, homemade sauce—it’s not quite a jam.

It’s more like a raspberry sauce. It’ll go in the cheesecake. It’ll go on top of the cheesecake. We’re going to have fresh raspberry flavor everywhere. You’re going to love it. It’s much better than using store bought jam. Trust me on this. So you’re just going to need a small saucepan here

And, you don’t wanna lose any berries, we’re going to add twelve ounces of berries to the saucepan. You can use fresh or frozen berries for today’s recipe, both are going to give you a pretty nice flavor, so just use whichever is in season.

We’re also going to add a fourth cup of granulated sugar, just sprinkle that over your berries, and a fourth cup of water, and just a tablespoon of lemon juice, which helps bring out the flavor really nicely. Now turn your heat to medium low,

And we’re going to cook stiring this pretty frequently. And as it cooks, you’re going to notice that the berries start to break down and they’re going to release their juices and everything’s gonna get nice and juicy. It’ll also start to darken in color, just keep stirring.

We will mash the berries as we cook them. And then at some point, it should start bubbling for you. We are going to cook while it bubbles until it has thickened a little bit. This isn’t going to get super thick, but I want to—I want to show you what the consistency looks like.

So you can see here things are getting really juicy, but the berries are not broken down as much as I like them to be and it’s still much too liquidy. Alright, so I’m feeling pretty good about this sauce.

I’m going to turn off my stove top heat. It’s not going to be like really thick or jammy. It’ll still be pretty liquidy, but—I’m not sure how to explain this —the movement of it feels a little more jammy. It’s thickened a little bit. It’s not thick, but it has thickened some.

It’s not so watery anymore. So I’m gonna take this off of heat, and we’re going to pour this through a fine mesh strainer because I don’t want all of those berries in or, I’m sorry, all those seeds in the cheesecake. And I’m going to use my spatula to mash this against the

Sides because I want as much of that juice from the berries as I can get. Alright, but as I said, I do want some berries or, I keep calling them berries, I do want some seeds in here because that adds to the texture. So I’m going to add two tablespoons of seeds.

Actually a little less because I accidentally knocked a few in there when we first started, but you should have about two tablespoons of seeds and then mix that all together. It smells so good in here right now. So this needs to cool completely before you can use it in the cheesecake.

So I’m going to pop it in the fridge to help speed up the process a little bit. And in the meantime, I will start getting together the other opponents of my cheesecake. I also want to make sure that I get my oven preheating to three hundred and twenty five degrees Fahrenheit,

And we’ll be baking our cheesecake on the center rack, so make sure that’s available for you. And while that’s cooling down, let’s make our graham cracker crust. This is my favorite graham cracker crust recipe. I use it on basically all of my cheesecakes.

Start with one and a half cups of graham cracker crumbs, which I used to be able to find those already crumbed for me in a box. Haven’t been able to do that recently, so I’ve just been crushing my own graham crackers.

I’ve been making my sister crush the graham crackers. I haven’t been doing any of that. We’re also going to add some sugar. I like to do two tablespoons of granulated and a tablespoon of light brown sugar. Well, added light brown sugar just helps the crust hold together a little

Bit because of the added moisture, but it really adds just a really subtle nice depth of flavor, so it’s worth adding. Now, we’ll just break everything up—mix everything up, break up the brown sugar. And then we’re going to add seven tablespoons of melted butter. You don’t want your butter to be super hot

Or it could melt the sugars and make things a little bit greasy, so it shouldn’t feel too warm to the touch. Add all of that in there. We’re just going to toss everything together until all of the crumbs are moistened. Okay, we’re going to be making this in a nine inch springform pan,

So I’ll pour the crust in here, and I’m going to press it evenly into the bottom and up the sides of the pan. And an easy way to do this is to take either a measuring cup or a straight up and down glass and just use that to tamp the crumbs in.

Alright, we’ll set this aside. Don’t need to prebake it or anything. It’ll firm up a bit as it sits. We can start making our cheesecake. So grab yourself a large mixing bowl. And to this, we are going to add twenty four ounces of brick-style cream cheese,

Don’t use the kind sold in tubs. We’re going to add one cup of granulated sugar in here with the cream cheese. And we’re going to stir this on low speed until it is smooth and lump free. Plug in our mixer first. Now, I’m using my electric hand mixer.

You can absolutely use your stand mixer. Just one thing to know if you’re doing that, use the paddle attachment and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl frequently just because cream cheese lumps like to hide near the bottom down there. Now I’m still going to scrape the sides

And bottom of my bowl here just because I want to be totally sure there are no lumps. Those lumps will stick with your cheesecake even after it’s baked. Next thing you’re going to need is a half cup of sour cream.

If you’ve made any of my cheesecakes before you know, I think this is an absolutely essential ingredient in cheesecake. Some recipes use heavy cream. It’s just not as good. You’re not gonna get as good of a taste or texture that way.

I’ll never steer you wrong with cheesecake. We’re also going to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. We’ll stir everything together. Alright, next, we are going to be adding our eggs. You’ll need three large eggs for today’s recipe, and these should ideally be room temperature.

Now when you’re making a cheesecake, one thing you want to avoid is whipping too much air into the batter or beating the eggs too much. If you do that, you can end up with a texture that is actually too airy.

The cheesecake will tend to rise in the oven and then fall as it cools, and your texture can just be kind of a little more crumbly. It’s not desirable. So what we’re going to do to help minimize our chance of over beating the mixture is we’re

Going to lightly beat each egg with a fork before we add it to the batter. This will give it a head start. And then we’re going to add the eggs one at a time, which is going to help ensure that we evenly incorporate them.

And we are going to stir them on low speed after each addition just until combined. So there’s one egg. Egg number two. Alright, and our third egg. So now we want to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. We want to make sure everything is thoroughly combined,

No streaks of egg, no cheese cake lumps, anything like that. I’m always glad when I do this, I usually find something that wasn’t completely mixed. Alright, and let’s grab our springform pan. Now I’m going to add a little less than half the batter into the pan

Because, don’t forget, we’re putting the raspberry in here as well. Now let’s check on our raspberry sauce. This should be completely cooled at this point. We’re going to drizzle about a third cup, I’d say a little less than a third cup over the cheesecake.

Now if you want to swirl it at this point, you can, but you’re not really going to be seeing those swirls because this is going to be the middle of the cheesecake, so it’s not really a huge deal. This is just to add that flavor to the center of the cheesecake.

That way you have raspberry truly throughout every bite. So now I’m going to gently and evenly pour the remaining batter over top. Alright, then we’re going to take a little less than another third cup, and we’re going to drizzle this over the top of the cheesecake.

Now I do like to be a little bit more careful with this because you’ll actually see this on top of the cheesecake. We’ll use our knife to swirl through here. This is where things get pretty. And you will notice at this point you still have raspberry sauce leftover—you’re supposed to.

We’re going to save this for adding on top. It’s like the cherry on top or I guess the raspberry on top, so don’t panic, just cover this, put it in your fridge and save it there until you’re ready to use it.

Now we’ll take this over to the center rack of our preheated oven, and it’s going to need to bake for about forty five to fifty five minutes. When the cheesecake is finished baking, you may notice that the edges may have puffed slightly. They shouldn’t have puffed a lot or anything like that,

But the edges should look done. And if you give it a slight jiggle, the very center will still jiggle a bit sort of like jello, but it shouldn’t be super liquidy inside. When your cheesecake is finished baking, what you’re going to do is you’ll turn off the oven temperature

And you’re going to crack the door like an inch or two, and you’re going to let it cool in your oven for an hour before you remove it. This is going to help reduce the risk of getting any cracks in your cheesecake.

So after an hour, you can remove your cheesecake from the oven. It’s actually not even that hot anymore. And let it cool until it’s reached room temperature, and then pop it in your fridge where it’s going to need to chill for at least six hours, preferably overnight before you can dig in.

And I do have another cheesecake that I prepped last night, so we’re going to go ahead and cut into that one so you can see how it looks. Alright, so here’s the cheesecake I prepped yesterday. Looks beautiful, if I do say so myself.

And at this point, you’re probably remembering, “What about that leftover sauce we have in the fridge?” So I hold on to that and then I like to add some fresh raspberries. I guess this is about a cup of raspberries

And just toss them in the sauce. That way it gives you a nice, fresh raspberry sauce to serve alongside your already raspberry-infused cheesecake. Let’s go ahead and dig in. I always get so nervous cutting things on camera probably because I always do a bad job.

Mhmm, this smells so good. Should really always wipe down your knife between cuts. That’s how you keep your cheesecake looking its best slice after slice. Phew, it was a little stressful cutting that. Alright, and then you can serve this with your sauce on the side.

It’s gonna be so good. And that is how you make my personal favorite raspberry cheesecake. If you try this one at home, leave me a comment, let me know what you think. I really do always love hearing from you. Thank you for watching, and I will see you next time.

Mmm, this is gonna be so good. That is a good cheesecake. Oh my gosh. Mmm. I didn’t cut all the way through, guys. What an amateur. Oh, I made a mess. Oop, try not to spill it all over your counter. This is why I get so stressed out.