Healthy Protein Cheesecake

Who doesn’t love cheesecake? I’m 99.9% sure that everyone dreams about it, and if they “don’t”, they’re lying. A couple of years in a row for my birthday, my friends and I went to the cheesecake factory just to enjoy those giant pieces of ridiculously rich cheesecake (red velvet is my fave). Thinking about how I haven’t enjoyed cheesecake in so long, I knew I had to make one.

Even though I am severely lactose intolerant, this cheesecake contains dairy. Honestly, I wanted to make a raw dairy free cheesecake, but I just didn’t have enough nuts (which are regularly used in place of cheese). Because I had cream cheese and greek yogurt, I gave this a go. However, even with my allergy, I can still enjoy this without belly aches.

The catch is something that is basically a miracle to me: Lactaid pills.

I never knew they existed until last year, but they are an absolute life saver! You can get them at any drug store, or any store that sells medication (cvs, walmart, target, etc). I take 1 or 2 with my first bite of dairy, and it saves me from stomach pain. They’re a really awesome product. If you suffer from lactose intolerance, I would definitely invest in them. With these pills, I don’t have to avoid frozen yogurt, or all of the other goodies out there that would regularly kill my stomach.

Enough about my boring stomach issues;

behold this delicious cheesecake!

The fact that it’s possible to make a cheesecake that is actually good for you blows my mind. Healthy desserts are such a phenomenon that I will never get over. Personally, this tastes like the real deal. Creamy, sweet, light; everything a cheesecake should be. This cheesecake came about from a variation of recipes I’ve tried over time from all over the internet. I definitely want to try other flavors of this, but for my first try, i’d say it turned out pretty good.

You can even be fancy and decorate for the fourth of July by adding some berries on top!

Yields: 1
cheesecake

Crust:

• 1 cup almond flour (or almonds ground into a flour consistency in your food processor)
• 4 tbsps coconut oil
• 4 tbsps honey
• 6 tbsps water
• 8 tbsps stevia

Filling:

• 2 (8 oz) packages fat free cream cheese 
• 2 (6oz) containers of plain nonfat Greek yogurt
• 2 scoops of whey protein (I used vanilla but you can use any flavor)
• 2 whole eggs
• 2 egg whites (6 T)
• 1 T vanilla extract 
• 1/3 cup stevia

First, mix all of the ingredients for the crust in a bowl until a crumbly dough forms. Press the crust into a pan (I used a 8 inch spring form pan but you could use a smaller pan for a taller cheesecake) and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes is up, take the crust out of the oven and put it in the fridge to chill.

While the crust is baking, beat together your ingredients for the filling with your mixer. If the yogurt isn’t room temperature you may need to blend it in a blender so that it isn’t too lumpy . Once evenly mixed, pour your filling over your COOLED crust.  Then,  put the crust & cheesecake filling into the oven at 250 for 30 minutes. Once the time is up, bring the oven up to 300 and cook your cheesecake for 45 more minutes. Once it’s done cooking for 75 minutes in total, take your cheesecake out and put it in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours. Once cold, cut into slices & serve!

TIP: To create the marble effect, I melted a 1/4 cup of dark chocolate and poured it over the batter before I stuck the cheesecake into the oven. Once I poured the chocolate, I mixed it around into swirls with a toothpick. Then, I stuck it in the oven to bake. This isn’t important for the taste, just the appearance.