Goat Milk Cashew Cheesecake

My mother-in-law told me about a grocery store in Arizona near their home that carried goat milk cream cheese. My sister-in-law is allergic to cow dairy, and I know she laments not being able to enjoy cheesecake. I do enjoy cheesecake, so when I found out about the goat cream cheese, I decided to make a cheesecake while we were in Arizona. 

I brought graham cracker crumbs, arrowroot powder, and vanilla extract with me since those weren't on hand in the Arizona kitchen. My mother-in-law asked around for a springform pan. We went to the store and found goat cheese and cashew cream cheese, but no goat cream cheese. Turns out she had combined the two products in her head. No problem! Chat GPT was able to adjust the recipe for goat cheese and cashew cream cheese, keeping the recipe free from cow products. 

(There is some Greek yogurt in this recipe, and that is okay for my sister-in-law to have, so not completely cow product free). 

Make the crust the usual way. While it's baking, combine the cashew cream cheese and the goat cheese together, blending well so there aren't any goat cheese chunks remaining. Add the sugar and Greek yogurt mixing well. I must say, at this point, it was quite tasty.

Beat the egg whites into soft peaks. I did this and then had to pause for some reason, and I think the egg whites began to separate, because when I scooped some out of the bowl, there was some liquid at the bottom of the bowl. I whipped it a little bit longer to get it to recombine, but I'm not sure if that impacted the bake of the cheesecake. 🤷‍♀️

I'm kicking myself a little bit. When I first came up with the recipe, I told chat that I didn't have a springform pan. It recommended baking in the oven with a tray of water below to help with the humidity needed for a non-cracking cheesecake. I never updated the recipe to specify that I had a springform pan. If I had, I'm sure the instructions would have changed to cooking in a hot water bath. Instead, I did the water pan underneath.

The cheesecake baked nicely, even though it had quite a few small cracks.

Let cool in a cracked oven for 1 hour and then move to the fridge for at least 6 hours.

I made a blueberry, strawberry, blackberry sauce to go on top.

Here's the cheesecake after chilling in the fridge overnight.

So many cracks! Apparently egg whites in cheesecake are more likely to crack along with baking without a hot water bath. Thankfully it didn't impact the taste: purely cosmetic. 

I fancied it up with the berry sauce and a couple sprigs of mint. Voila! So delicious. My sister-in-law agreed. Maybe it's been too long since I've had actual cheesecake, but I didn't detect much of a difference taste and texture wise. 

I would definitely make it again if I could find the ingredients up here...