Paul's Cheesecake

This is the cheesecake I grew up with - made in a pie plate, crustless, with an optional fruit topping served on the side. No fancy water baths or springform pans needed. My husband makes a dang good fancy "New York Style" cheesecake that does use all that, but on the nights I make cheesecake, I make the one that I begged my mom to make me for my birthday as far back as I can remember. 

P.S. My husband and I love cheesecake so much it was our wedding cake. 

Ingredients

• 1 pound cream cheese
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

Topping:

• 1 cup sour cream
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Oven: 350 degrees

How to get 'er done

Beat cheese, eggs, sugar, and almond extract together throughly till smooth and lemon colored. When I tried to make it this time I loosely interpreted "beat" as something I could do in a large bowl with a wooden smooth. NOPE. All it gained me was TWO dirty bowls as I then poured it into my stand mixer bowl to finish it up. Smooth is also relative as I *always* have small soft chunks of cream cheese suspended in the finished batter. *shrug* seems to turn out OK in the end. EDIT: Highly recommend that you cream the sugar and cream cheese together first, and then beat in eggs and almond extract. Whatever texture you pour the raw batter into the pan is the texture you get in the finished product. 

Pour into a greased pie plate and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, take out of the oven and cool for 20 min. 

While cheesecake is cooling, beat sour cream, sugar and vanilla throughly. 

Pour this over the top of the pie. Return to 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. Cool, then refrigerate. 

Optional - can be baked on a "crumb crust" that I assume means those nasty graham cracker things - although why someone would ruin a perfectly good cheesecake with it I'm not sure. The original recipe from my mom says "adjust initial baking time to reflect that." which I assume means it takes longer - because Matt *does* like the crust and that's what I did when I cooked it this week and it took FOREVER. 

Other Recipe notes: 

"From Paul Barnes. It was his mother's recipe." Paul was a navy friend of my Dad's and the best man at their wedding.