Lite No Bake Lemon Cheesecake

One more lemon dessert (at least for a while). It’s getting warm (well, warm for San Francisco, which is still cool for the rest of the country). So, I decided to go for a no bake option and give my oven a bit of a rest!

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

Cake

3 cups, crushed graham crackers or Nilla wafers (I went with the Nilla wafers because they’re a little sweeter and, frankly, I had them in the house already)
½ cup butter
1 package (3 oz.), lemon Jell-O
1 T lemon juice
1 cup water
1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, brought to room temperature
½ cup sugar
2 t vanilla
1 t lemon rind
14 oz. heavy whipping cream

Directions

We’ll start with the crust.

Lightly spray a 9” x 13” baking dish and set it aside.

Crush your Nilla wafers (or graham crackers) until you get 3 cups worth.

In a medium microwave-safe bowl melt the butter. Pour your crumbs into the bowl, mix them together (using your hands is easiest), and then press them into the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Put the dish in the fridge while you work on the filling.

Boil the water (so that you have 1 cup of boiling water), pour it into a medium bowl and add the lemon Jell-O. Whisk until the Jell-O powder is dissolved then the lemon juice and whisk again until combined. Then, put the bowl in the fridge for about 30 minutes to cool a bit – you’ll want the consistency to have changed and the mixture to have thickened a bit (but not solidified).

Get a large bowl and add the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and lemon rind. Mix together until well combined.

Get your Jell-O mixture and add that to the bowl. Mix again until well combined.

In a separate bowl, pour your heavy whipping cream and beat until stiff peaks form.

Gently fold the whipped cream into the bowl with the lemon ingredients until you can’t see any more streaks.

Get your baking dish out of the fridge and pour in your cheesecake mixture. IF you have any additional crumbs left over (over and above the 3 cups in the crust), sprinkle them over the cheesecake.