Brianne's Birthday Cheese Cake

Creamy Baked Cheesecake

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 (14 ounce) can EAGLE BRAND® Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 (8 ounce) container sour cream, at room temperature
• 1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling (optional)

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar and butter; press firmly on bottom of 9-inch springform pan. 
2. In large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Add eggs and lemon juice; mix well. Pour into prepared pan.
3. Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until center is set. Remove from oven; top with sour cream. Bake 5 minutes longer. Cool 1 hour. Chill at least 4 hours. Garnish with pie filling. Store leftovers covered in refrigerator

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*Be careful mixing this stuff it can be a pretty big mess.When it's all combined it should be similar to pancake mix but a bit thicker.

Footnotes

• For New York Style Cheesecake
• Omit sour cream. Increase cream cheese to 4 (8-ounce) packages and eggs to 4. Add 2 tablespoons flour after eggs. Proceed as above. Bake 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center is set. Cool. Chill. Serve as above.
  
  
  
  BEAST NOTES:
  We didnt't have any lemon kicking around so we hucked some vanilla in there as well as some sugar because we used non-sweatened condensed milk...it happens.
  
  SO we read a little bit too late that there is this thing called...a water bath? Apparently cheese cakes like that. The main thing we found when we did this is that we suffered from cracking when it came to the final product. Make sure you cook it and slowly lower the temp. The longer it bakes the less cracking we had. When you sort of wiggle the cake it should wiggle about 2 or so inches down - that's when we new it was done. MAKE SURE you let this sucker cool before considering sticking it in your mouth.