No-Bake Cheesecake with Ginger Cookie Crust

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Making baked cheesecake is something that I don't wish to do.

I like eating cheesecake, but making the baked kind seems to be fraught with all sorts of dangers.

Using a springform pan? Then there's that extra step of lining the pan with aluminun foil so the liquid from the bain marie doesn't seep into the inside of the baking cheesecake. (Excuse me? I have to bake it in a bain marie?) There's that waiting for the cheesecake to cool to room temperature, plus the additional overnight cooling in the fridge. Not to mention horror stories about cracked tops, undercooked/overcooked interiors... or other such disasters.

So, in the rare occasion that I make cheesecake at home (I think maybe just one time prior to this one), I've "cheated" and made no-bake cheesecakes. If I remember correctly, my previous cheesecake was a no-bake White Chocolate and Lime Cheesecake (made really tangy with lime, because we're acid-freaks) with a oreo cookie crumb crust. I made 2 of those for a party in 2006. For that version, I used gelatin.

But, my lazy self wanted to further reduce the number of steps for making even a no-bake cheesecake. (Yes, dissolving gelatin in some liquid is back-breaking work.)

When I saw Kevin of Closet Cooking make his version of no-bake cheesecake, I made a note to try it out.

We don't usually have cream cheese in the house, but not so long ago, we happened to have some lying around, doomed to languish in the refrigerator.

We don't usually have cookies in the house (bought or homemade), but we happened to have some Anna's Ginger Thins. (Apparently, according to their website, they are "[t]he most famous and beloved ginger cookie in the world. Since 1929.")

We don't usually have heavy cream in the house, but we happened to have some leftover from making butter chicken.

The forces in the universe wanted me to make this cheesecake!



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For the crust, I jammed our food processor with Anna's Ginger Thins and pulverized them. I added some melted butter and processing them, adding enough butter until the mixture was clumpy.



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To make the filling, I used Kevin's filling recipe as a guide. I whipped together cream cheese, sugar and lemon juice.



In a separate bowl, I tried whipping cream by hand. "Try" is the operative word. My arm was out of practice and failed miserably in the getting-air-into-the-cream department.

I folded the two white mixtures together.



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I had hoped that the two different shades of white would show up better in that photo.

I pressed down the buttered ginger cookie crumbs into a square baking pan lined with parchment paper. The whipped white filling went in.



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We happened to have some chocolate truffly things in the pantry as well. So I melted a few of those in the microwave and filled a mini-sandwich-bag-slash-pastry bag. Drizzle!



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Since I'm not only the lazy kind, but also the impatient kind, I placed the pan into the freezer (instead of the fridge) to chill.



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The "frozen" cheesecake was easier to cut, in terms of making nice edges, so we just kept the thing in the freezer. Also saves us the problem of it going bad and us having to throw it out.

To serve, slice and let soften a little bit.