I started making cheesecake as a young lad, back in my junior high days. I absolutely loved cheesecake, and I remember those Jello No-Bake Cheesecake commercials implying how difficult and time consuming cheesecake is. The husband would come home and think his wife had been making cheesecake all day and be super impressed. Of course, that was the selling point. It was way easier to make the No-Bake from the box and you could spend your time doing whatever else you wanted. I like a good challenge and figured if I could learn to make really good cheesecake, it would give me an edge with the ladies. And so I began.

I tried a few different recipes and found a simple filling base that was better than the fancier, more complex recipes. I tried different graham cracker crust recipes and eventually, after some tweaks here and there over the years, I’ve created my own. Naturally, I started out using sugar and topping with fruit and glaze. Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple drinks were big back then and I thought that combo would make an awesome cheesecake. My first original was a classic cheesecake filling, topped with glazed strawberries and kiwi…with a graham cracker crust.

I would typically make cheesecake for holidays with the family, and everyone would look forward to them. One year for Thanksgiving, I made a special cheesecake for my dad. Like so many others these days, he had developed diabetes. And it wasn’t from all my cheesecakes, ok…he was a long haul truck driver and his diet consisted heavily of fast food and soda. Anyway, this was around the time Truvia was coming out. I’m not a proponent of chemical sweeteners, so because this new sweetener was a natural alternative to sugar, it caught my attention. Thing is, it only came in little packets at the time. I bought a big box of it from Costco and proceeded to rip open tiny packets until I had enough to substitute the amount of sugar I needed. My dad was able to enjoy cheesecake that Thanksgiving. I admit, it was pretty good, but you could tell it was not sweetened with sugar.

Eventually I started looking to cut down the amount of sugar in my diet. I noticed that I was feeling better and better. I wasn’t completely eliminating it, just being more conscientious about it. As other natural sweeteners became more and more available, I had the idea to just stop using added sugar in my cheesecake altogether. Instead of using glaze, I would just use fresh fruit. The tricky part was finding the right sweeteners, and the right balance of those sweeteners, so that no one could tell I didn’t use sugar. It was a bit challenging and took some experimentation, but you know me… I like a good challenge.

You can be the judge for yourself, but I’m confident to say… if you didn’t already know, you wouldn’t know.

-Tory

Also…

I hope you love your cheesecake. Thank you for your support.

A special thank you to all my friends and family that have been so supportive along the way.

This would have never happened without your continued encouragement.