Say hello to the ultimate smooth and luxuriously creamy healthy cheesecake recipe.
This. is. what. dreams. are. made. of.
Lighter and creamier than Cheesecake Factory – with a third of the calories and sugar!
I figured today—my birthday—is the perfect time to share one of my own personal favorite recipes. When I say this healthy cheesecake is good, you know it has to be really good… because I do not take my cheesecake lightly.
I’m exceedingly selective when it comes to good cheesecake.
So many cheesecake recipes out there are not only way too sweet (seriously, a cup and a half of sugar in a cheesecake is too much!) but also too firm. The perfect cheesecake should never be overpowered by sugar, and every creamy bite should absolutely MELT in your mouth.
2018 Edit – There’s now a Brownie Cheesecake Recipe too, because of course there had to be a chocolate version!
I ate my birthday cheesecake in my pajamas.
For breakfast.
Happy birthday, indeed!
Can we talk about the sugar for a minute?
It’s called cheese cake for a reason.
Many cheesecake recipes call for such a large quantity of sugar that the bold and savory cheese flavor is lost and sugar ends up being the only thing you taste. If I wanted to eat something that tasted like sugar, I would skip the cheesecake and eat a bowl of frosting.
(Not that eating a bowl of frosting isn’t also delicious in its own right…)
Sugar was the first thing I knew I could slash when it came to creating a healthier cheesecake recipe. I started by researching traditional cheesecake recipes to get a feel for how much sugar, cream cheese, vanilla, and other basic ingredients usually go into cheesecake. And then I played around quite a bit.
A lot goes into my recipe creations!
With this particular cheesecake recipe, I also knew I wanted to omit all the heavy cream called for in traditional cheesecake recipes and replace it with something much healthier.
Since cheesecake should have a subtle tang to begin with, I came up with the idea to use yogurt, and it worked perfectly!
Also left out were the eggs normally found in cheesecake recipes, which took a bit of trial to find the perfect replacement since eggs add moisture and bind recipes together.
Since there’s nothing more frustrating than having to visit multiple health food stores to locate all the ingredients in a recipe, I knew I wanted this healthy cheesecake to call only for ingredients you can find at a regular grocery store.
*Crust is the recipe from this post: Vegan Cheesecake Recipe
Healthy Cheesecake Of Your Dreams
Ingredients
- 24 oz cream cheese, such as trader joes vegan
- 2 cups plain yogurt, such as coconutmilk yogurt
- 2 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp cornstarch - or here's a Keto Cheesecake Recipe
- 1/2 cup sugar or maple syrup, honey, or xylitol for sugar-free
- pinch uncut stevia OR 2 additional tbsp sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Fill a 9x13 pan about halfway with water and place it on your oven’s lower rack. Bring cream cheese to room temperature. Using a blender or hand blender, beat all cheesecake ingredients just until smooth. (Do not overbeat, as this would introduce air bubbles that would burst in the oven and thus cause cracking.) Smooth into a 9-inch springform pan, either lined with a crust or without. Place on the middle rack above the other pan. Bake 30 minutes, and do not open the oven during this time. When the time is up, leave the oven door closed and turn off the heat. Leave in the closed oven for an additional 5 minutes. Then remove—it will still look underdone—and let cool 20 minutes before placing the still-underdone cheesecake in the refrigerator. It’s important not to put the cheesecake right from the oven to the fridge, because you want it to cool gradually so it doesn’t crack. Chill at least 6 hours, during which time it will firm up to the proper texture. Leftovers covered in the fridge will last around 3-4 days. That is… if you don’t eat it all first!View Cheesecake Nutrition Facts
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Could you please state on which serving the bigger or smaller that the nutrition is based on.. A serving of pie is not to me a tenth of a pie, rather an eight. The weight watchers cookbooks do the same thing… I want to know a normal portion not just what makes the numbers look good. I don’t mind I dessert being high calorie if I have planed for it.
Love this healthy cheesecake it is wonderful
Is the cheese cake recipe in your book? I plan to purchase.
Aw thank you! The book mostly has recipes that aren’t on the blog to ensure people get their money’s worth, but there are two other cheesecake recipes in the book! 🙂
Happy Birthday! Looks delicious! Is there a recipe for the crust?
Happy birthday, Katie!! Cool birthday cheesecake, it looks really fluffy and snowy just dig in 🙂 but is it all dairy-free? I’m asking because my bf has a dairy allergy but I keep trying to make up dairy-free desserts for him so it would very cool if he could have a cheesecake 🙂
Happy birthday Katie! This sounds really good but I would prefer a crust on my cheesecake. Do you have a recipe for a healthy crust?
My family is full of cheesecake fanatics, and this just became our new go-to recipe. So delicious!
Would this work with a different kind of pan, say a greased metal pan or a greased glass pan? I don’t own a springform pan, but I’d love to try to make this recipe!
I deviated slightly from the recipe (I am not vegan), but the end result was absolutely delicious.
I used Neufchâtel cheese, Splenda, and lemon juice from a bottle. I baked the pie in a chilled crust (http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2014/06/perfect-graham-cracker-crust/) made with Smart Balance instead of unsalted butter. I followed the rest of the instructions pretty closely. My pie cracked a lot and it didn’t ever get quite as firm as I would have liked it to get, but I suspect my substitutions are responsible for that. Regardless, the flavor was absolutely delicious, and I just had some with Fat Free ReddiWip and a thawed frozen strawberry – delicious! It’s also amazing plain.
Unfortunately, it looks like my earlier review didn’t post properly. Anyway, I made a few modifications to this recipe, and I thought the end result was awesome! I used Neufchâtel cheese, lemon juice from a bottle, and Splenda. I baked it in this crust http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2014/06/perfect-graham-cracker-crust/ which I had chilled for about an hour. The end result wasn’t quite as firm as I would have liked it to be, but I imagine my substitutions are responsible for those changes. The taste was excellent. It was delicious plain, but I also had some with a thawed frozen strawberry and a bit of Fat Free ReddiWip, which was also very tasty.
Really it looks so amazing….