We spent our Fourth of July at a barbecue potluck at Robbie’s brother’s house this past weekend. I was in charge of bringing dessert and since I love banana anything, I decided to try my hand at a Banana Cheesecake. I found a recipe on the Internet but decided that it needed more banana and a little more Umph so, I altered the recipe by using Nilla wafers instead of a graham cracker crust, adding more banana into the mixture, adding sliced bananas to the bottom of the crust, adding less sugar and adding a thickened banana créme pie filling into the mix. I was a little nervous after altering the recipe, not knowing how it would turn out or if anyone would like it, but in the end, it was one of the best banana cheesecakes I’ve ever had and everyone at the potluck loved it! If any of you would like to try my Banana Créme Cheesecake, here is the recipe. (The picture above isn’t a great picture but it was the best one I had. I had a better picture on my phone but I recently had to exchange my phone for a new one because of a bent pin and I forgot to backup my media T_T)
2 cups Nilla wafer crumbs (I would recommend using a food processor to crush the cookies or if you don’t have one, you could do it my way by placing them in a Ziploc bag and hammering away lol)
1/3 cup melted margarine
Half of a 1/4 cup white sugar
3 (8 ounce) packages of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
2/4 cup and half of a 1/4 cup white sugar
3 extra large eggs at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (next time I make this I’m going to try it with banana extract)
1 cup mashed banana (approximately 2 1/2 to 3 bananas mashed with a fork)
1 package of instant Jello Banana Créme pudding or pie filling (made using only 1 cup of milk for thickness)
2 sliced bananas
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
In a medium bowl, mix together the Nilla wafer crumbs, half of a 1/4 cup of white sugar and melted margarine until they are evenly incorporated. Tightly press into the bottom of a greased 9″ springform baking pan evenly. Bake in oven for 4 minutes and set aside to cool.
In another bowl, mix together the cream cheese and 2/4 cup and half of a 1/4 cup of white sugar until they are evenly incorporated and smooth. Blend in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the vanilla extract, mashed bananas and mixed Jello Banana Créme pudding or pie filling. Once mixed, set aside and align the bottom of the prepared crust with the sliced bananas (use more if needed.) Pour the mixture into the prepared crust.
*optional:If you don’t want the cheesecake to appear plain, you can decorate the top as I did before baking. You can pretty much use anything you want (for example caramel or strawberry sauce,) but I ended up using Smuckers hot fudge topping (since it was all I had) to create a decorative top layer. If you don’t care about decoration, then you can skip this step.
Bake for 35-40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the center is set. Let cool on rack with the door open for at least an hour and then refrigerate for at least 3 hours for the cheesecake to get firm. You can also garnish the top with sliced bananas as I did, but again that is optional. If you do, I would recommend dipping the banana slices in a mixture of lemon juice and water (or 7-up like I did lol) so that they do not oxidize and turn brown.
If any of you try my recipe, please comment and let me know what you think. Enjoy!