Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?

Well, no, she can't. Or rather, she could, but cherry pie involves a flour-based pie crust, which ain't happening 'round here. Which is why there is a cherry cheesecake in my refrigerator, instead.

There's a Montmorency cherry tree in the backyard of our old house. We still own the house; we rent it to a terrific tenant. A terrific tenant who spotted bugs. Which is why I was hanging around the backyard the other day, waiting for the nice Terminex man to finish his inspection. By the time he came out from under the house I'd picked almost a quart of cherries.

Montmorencies are a tart cherry, not usually eaten raw out-of-hand, but rather cooked and sweetened, a use for which they are unsurpassed. But again, I wasn't going to do the whole flour pie crust thing. And anyway, I didn't have enough cherries fill up the pie plate.

On the other hand, I was long on cottage cheese, having bought a bunch at 50c a carton the other day -- it was marked down because it was one day to the "sell-by" date. (Useful info: The sell-by date is not an expiration date! The stuff is not bad, nor do you have to use it up by the next day. Indeed, sealed cottage cheese will keep for at least a couple of months past the sell-by date if you A) keep it in the fridge, and B) turn it upside down. Turning it upside-down apparently magically seals out all evil spoilage molecules. Don't ask me how. This does not work once you've opened the package.) I was also, as I'd mentioned here a couple of weeks back, long on eggs, having bought them cheap as well. (Do you notice a theme, here? Now you know how I've afforded a low carb diet for 13 years.)

Cheesecake is just about the most satisfactory dessert to decarb. Why? Because unlike so many desserts, it doesn't owe its texture to sugar or flour, but rather to protein and fat. This is why there are so many cheesecake recipes in my cookbooks. (Well, that, and I love cheesecake.) I've made so many cheesecakes that unless I'm trying to duplicate a past effort, I generally wing it.

Here's how I made this one:

First I made a "graham" crust: In my food processor I ground up 2 cups of Fiber One cereal (All-Bran would do, too. For the lowest carb crust use All-Bran with Extra Fiber, or as we call it around here, Super Colon Blow. Old Saturday Night Live bit.) Make sure to get it quite fine, or the texture of your crust will be off. Then I added 1/2 cup Splenda and 1/2 cup raw wheat germ, and pulsed to mix them in. Then I turned on the food processor and left it running while I drizzled in 1/4 cup of melted butter, then sprinkled in 3 tablespoons of water.

(For a lower carb cheesecake you could make your crust out of ground almonds or hazelnuts instead.)

I turned this mixture out into a 10" pie plate I'd sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, and pressed it out into a crust. Baked it for 13 minutes at 350.

In the meanwhile, I gave the food processor bowl and blade a cursory wipe, then reassembled them and put in 3 cups of full-fat cottage cheese and 1/2 cup sour cream. I ran the processor till all the lumps were gone, then left it running while I added 2 eggs, 1/2 cup Splenda, 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract, and the juice of half a lemon. (I would have added the grated zest, too, but I'd already used it in another recipe.) Oh, and I threw in a quarter-cup of vanilla whey protein powder, too.

Poured this mixture into the cooled crust, turned the oven to 325, and slide the cheesecake in. Added a pan of water on the bottom rack, for moisture, and let the cake bake for 50 minutes.

While the cake was baking I pitted my cherries. This is the biggest job of the whole recipe, and I wouldn't blame you if you went with strawberries instead, which don't take so much work. I used a bamboo skewer, running each cherry through with the blunt end, pushing the pit out through the stem-hole in the process. It's times like these that it's good to have a television in the kitchen. I wound up with maybe three cups of cherries.

Put my pitted cherries in a non-reactive saucepan, and added maybe 1/3 cup of water, plus a half-cup of Splenda. Brought it to a simmer and sprinkled in 1 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin powder, stirring madly all the while to prevent lumps. (If you don't have unflavored gelatin in the house, you could thicken up the juice with a touch of guar or xanthan instead.) Threw in a few drops of red food coloring, just to make it pretty. I let the whole thing simmer for 15 minutes,then let it cool on the stove top.

When the cheesecake was done, I removed it from the oven and let it cool for 20 minutes or so, too, then spooned the cherries over it and chilled it overnight.

It was yummy, beautiful, and exceedingly nutritious. Because of the high protein content, cottage cheese cakes make a great light meal -- an ideal breakfast on sultry summer mornings when you can't bear the though of hot food.

Assuming 12 servings, each will have: 215 Calories; 9g Fat ; 15g Protein; 22g Carbohydrate; 5g Dietary Fiber; 17 grams usable carb.

Again, that carb count could be brought down by substituting a nut crust, or by using All-Bran With Extra Fiber for your "graham" crust.