{Easy} Cherry Cheesecake with Pretzel Crust

The day after Mother’s Day the hubs and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary.

7 years. Man.

It seems like we’ve been together for a long time, yet only yesterday when we said I do.

If you checked out my DIY Washi Tape post, you would have seen one of our wedding pictures. If you missed it, here it is again:

Awww, weren’t we just the cutest couple?

Anywho.. I wanted to make our anniversary special, so I made the hubs a nice dinner, complete with his favorite dessert- cheesecake. Yum!

I made a delicious dessert with a little spin. I made a pretzel crust instead of a graham cracker crust.

And let me tell you, it was yum! It added a more buttery/salty flavor to the whole cheesecake package.

And we liked it!

So, here’s the recipe, complete with pictures for you to drool over. Enjoy!

Doesn’t that look delicious? Here’s how I did it:

I took about 3 hands full of pretzels and stuck them in a large Ziploc bag. Then I took a can and smashed them down to a smaller size by rolling the can over the pretzels with a little pressure. Be careful- the salt on the pretzels may pierce the bag and cause a hole, so go slow!

Since I wanted my pretzel grounded finely, I poured my crush pretzels into the food processor to the 1-cup line to have them pulverized even more.

With my lovely assistant’s help. we ground those puppies up perfectly. Way to go Big V!

I then added my pretzels to a bowl with 1/4 cup melted butter and stirred it up.

I taste-tested my crust and realized that it was too buttery/salty so I added about 2 teaspoons of sugar to the mix. Much better!

Then I had my excellent helper push the pretzel crust down into the bottom of a round cake pan. She made sure the entire bottom of the pan was covered.

We set the crust aside and blended together a package and a half (12 oz.) of cream cheese, 2 large eggs and a 1/4 cup of granulated sugar until it was nice and creamy.

Here it is all mixed up. Yum!

Then my lovely assistant took a picture of me putting the cheese cake “batter” into the pan with the pretzel crust. What a great little photographer!

Bake at 325 until the sides are golden brown and you only have a tiny bit of movement when you jiggle the pan. This could take you up to 50 minutes, but it only took me 25 as my oven runs very hot. Be careful and keep an eye on your cheesecake so it doesn’t burn!

Once your cheesecake has cooled, take a knife and run it along the edge of the pan to loosen it up. Turn it upside down to release and then right side up to put it on your favorite dessert platter.

Then, feel free to add whatever pie filling to the top or leave it plain. And if you’re feeling really daring, feel free to make your own cheesecake topping from scratch!

I have a ton of cans of pie filling that I got dirt cheap with coupons, so I got lazy and just used that. It was still delicious, and besides, there’s nothing wrong with a little semi-homeade, right?

So, there you have it folks, super easy!

My hubby enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Big V enjoyed it.

And now it’s your turn. Let me know how it turned out for you!

Click the link for the entire recipe on Ziplist!

Cherry Cheesecake with Pretzel Crust