For Thanksgiving, sweet potato cheesecake

My uncle’s special Thanksgiving dessert is sweet potato pie. My brother’s special Thanksgiving dessert is pumpkin cheesecake. And since I’m going to see both of them on Thanksgiving, I decided to make a hybrid of the two—sweet potato cheesecake.

Growing up, cheesecake was a rare treat—considered extremely fancy and not something you ate at home. Mom instead made a berry yogurt pie with a granola crust, which while not as rich and dense as cheesecake but was still a creamy sweet treat. But still, it wasn’t quite the same.

One day our next-door neighbor made a cheesecake from scratch. It was a plain cheesecake with tall sturdy sides topped with a thin-layer of sour cream. Each bite was luscious and I thought she must have some special skills to make something so satisfying. A few years ago my dad gave me a generous Williams-Sonoma gift certificate. I raided the store, splurging on items I wouldn’t ordinarily buy and one of those was a spring-form pan. I had decided it was time to teach myself how to make cheesecake.

I went through a myriad of recipes, and some were super complicated, insisting you separate your eggs, folding in the yolks and whites at different times. Some called for baking it for an hour and then leaving it in the turned-off oven to cool for another half hour. Some used crusts while others didn’t. What I soon learned, however, was that cheesecake doesn’t have to be a lot of work—given the right circumstances you could whip one every night, which I practically did when I lived with a guy who was on a low-carb diet.

The basic formula is simple, 1 egg per 1/2 pound of cream cheese. If you don’t have time to get your cream cheese and eggs to room temperature (as every recipe will recommend), then just rest them on top of the oven as you preheat—they’ll soon be warm enough. Then just throw your eggs, cream cheese, sweetener, some vanilla, some spices and some lemon juice into the blender, and in minutes you’ll have a batter. If you’re forgoing a crust, you’re pretty much done save for baking it for a half hour or so, and then chilling (though warm cheese cake is just as appealing as cold). Sometimes they’ll crack on top, and I reckon the experts would say that I pulled it out of the oven too fast or over beat the batter. But an ugly cheesecake isn’t a problem because I always spread on top some sour cream mixed with a bit of sugar, lemon juice and vanilla, which deliciously masks all imperfections.
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