light + fluffy cheesecake

I had my mind set on serving a light and fluffy cheesecake at our Mother's Day celebration on Sunday, but was having problems finding a recipe I loved. 

Until this...

Light + Fluffy Cheesecake | Mary-Ellen Cocchi via Family Circle Magazine, 2005

Oh, my! This is a must try recipe and I guarantee you will love it. You know how cheesecake can be dense and compact and heavy? Not this one, it's as light and fluffy as a cloud. I'm especially fond of the fact that it doesn't have a graham cracker crust as I find that crusts tend to take away from the subtlety of a cheesecake.

To give proper credit, I searched the internet for the author's name and found this funny story, which gave me the information I was looking for: the recipe is from a 2005 edition of Family Circle magazine. I'm not sure what this says about me, that I would hold on to a scrap of paper for that long, but why oh why did I wait ten years to finally make this recipe?

It's that good!

NOTES | I didn't have a 10" springform pan as recommended, so I used the 11" I already had on hand. Because I wanted the cake to extra tall and highly impressive as I served it, I added an extra 8 oz. package of Philadelphia cream cheese to the recipe and had no troubles with it erupting like a volcano! The original author suggests making the cheesecake up to 4 days ahead, but I found that the cake was it's fluffiest and lightest on the day after baking...we let ours chill overnight.