A fabulous frozen dessert -- Raspberry Cheesecake Ice Cream Dessert!

(Photo by Jamie Cooks it Up!)

I recently tried this amazing recipe from Jamie Cooks it Up! and just had to share the link with others:Raspberry Cheesecake Ice Cream Dessert.  It went over really well at the church potluck I took it to, and the next evening we shared the leftovers with my daughter's family, who loved it too.

I changed a few things.  Since I'm not eating wheat or gluten (and couldn't find gluten-free graham crackers locally) I had to make a substitution for the graham cracker crumbs.  I used a combination of crumbs from gluten-free vanilla sandwich cookies and Rice Chex®.  I'm sure the graham cracker crumbs would be tastier, and certainly easier, but this substitution worked out fine.

Since I couldn't find raspberry spreadable fruit (think the store I looked in was all out),  I used black raspberry.  I also found that for my microwave, heating the spreadable fruit for 1 minute was way too much.  The fruit was hot -- too hot, I felt, for adding to the top of my just-prepared cheesecake mixture.  It would definitely have melted the mixture below it.  So I let the spreadable fruit cool to lukewarm before dropping spoonfuls of it atop the cheesecake mix in the pan.

Also, I used lower-fat Neufchatel cheese rather than regular cream cheese, and I used fat-free sweetened condensed milk.  Both of these worked out fine.  And I used frozen unsweetened raspberries rather than fresh ones -- just the store brand.  With so many costly ingredients in this dessert, I wasn't about to spring for fresh raspberries too.  And, I reasoned, the berries are going to become frozen anyway, so why not just use frozen ones to begin with?  People actually thought the berries were fresh, so obviously that substitution worked too.

My daughter and I were thinking that this would be great with blueberries as well -- or even strawberries, though they should probably be chopped or cut up.  A frozen whole strawberry would be a bit difficult to eat.

Maybe your family and friends would enjoy this fabulous dessert as well.  While you're at Jamie Cooks it Up!, check out her other recipes as well.  This lady is one amazing cook!