Hesitant, Hopeful

On Tuesday morning, Matt came home from work with a whole lot of dairy. He came home with 8 tubs of cream cheese spread in various flavors, five pounds of shredded Colby and Jack, and a two pound block of sharp cheddar. Though we would have paid almost $50 for all of this at the grocery store, he got all of that for $11. All this time, the last eight months, we've been seriously missing the value of his working where he does. Cheap food, that's the real gem, particularly because cheese costs about $10 for three pounds of shred in the grocery store. It's ridiculous.

It was when I saw the chocolate cream cheese spread that I had an idea. Cheesecake! So I hunted down a recipe, got myself a crust, and set to making it. It was so, so simple and we loved it!

No-bake Chocolate Cheesecake
Adapted from Easy Cheesecake Recipe #1 at MomsWhoThink.com

1 shortbread crust
8 ounce package chocolate soft cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar (or Splenda)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
8 ounces Cool Whip, slightly thawed

Beat cream cheese until it's smooth, add sugar, mix until completely smooth. Add sour cream and vanilla, beat until well blended. Carefully fold in Cool Whip (it's important to fold, rather than mix to keep Cool Whip from falling). Spoon into pie crust and chill four hours, serve.

I used Splenda, rather than sugar, and used a shortbread cookie crust, rather than graham cracker. The only thing was that the pie was really soft and fluffy. I think this has something to do with the fact that rather than using a brick of cream cheese, I used cream cheese spread, which is a little bit softer to start with. I won't change anything next time, except maybe to try a different flavor of cream cheese, I think next time I might just freeze it. It seems like it would set up a little harder frozen because of the ease of freezing Cool Whip. Matt's promised me pumpkin cream cheese soon, so I definitely see a no-bake pumpkin cheesecake in my future!

Can't wait!