Cinnamon Apple Walnut Cheesecake

Are you still drooling from the Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cake post? If you are, you can still keep drooling for this next one: Cinnamon Apple Walnut Cheesecake.

This recipe was adapted from Kraftfoods Apple Pecan Cheesecake. Their recipe makes a 13 x 9 cheesecake with graham cracker crust and uses sour cream in the cheesecake. I didn't want to make such a big cheesecake and I wanted to try a different crust, so I changed a few things in the recipe. The picture below was from Kraftfoods site:

Ingredients:
1¾ cups ginger snaps crumbs
½ cup melted butter
2 tablespoons sugar
or you could use a pre-made graham cracker crust(which I usually do)

2 pkg cream cheese, 8oz each
½ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
2 eggs

1 big apple or 2 med apple, peeled, cored & chopped into little chucks, about 1 – 1½ cup
¼ cup brown sugar
½ tsp cinnamon

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9” round cake pan or pie pan with foil. Mix ginger snaps crumbs, butter & sugar and press in the bottom of pan. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and cool.
2) In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mix until blended. Be sure to scrape sides of bowl after each egg addition.
3) Pour cream cheese mixture into crust and set side.
4) Mix apple chunks, brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle apple mixture onto cream cheese mixture. Some of the apple chunks will drop in the cream cheese mixture but that’s ok. The remaining will stay on top of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. (Trust me, it’s better cold. We couldn’t wait to try it, so we tried a small piece within 2 hours after it was baked, it was still a little warm and I did not like it warm.)

Note: The girls gave their paws up for this cheesecake. :-)