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Cheesecake does not need a holiday to deserve a place on the table.

For a homesteader, it can actually be one of the more interesting desserts to make because so many of the ingredients can come from your own kitchen, pantry, garden, orchard, or dairy animals. You can certainly make a perfectly good cheesecake with store-bought cream cheese, eggs, sugar, butter, and toppings. But if you enjoy making food from scratch, cheesecake gives you plenty of opportunities to take the recipe further.

You may be able to use eggs from your own hens, butter or soft cheese made from your own milk, berries or fruit you grew or preserved, homemade caramel, home-canned pie filling, jam, honey, nuts, herbs, or even a crust made from homemade cookies or crackers.

That is what makes cheesecake interesting to me. It can be as simple or as homemade as you want it to be.

In This Article

Cheesecake Fits a From-Scratch Homestead Kitchen Surprisingly Well

Cheesecake sometimes gets treated like a special-occasion dessert that requires a cart full of specialty ingredients. It can be that, but it doesn't have to be.

At its core, cheesecake is built around a few basic components: a crust, a creamy filling, eggs in many baked versions, sweetener, and whatever flavoring or topping you decide to use. If you already keep a working pantry and preserve some of your own food, you probably have more cheesecake ingredients available than you realize.

That makes it a useful dessert for using what you have rather than always starting with a shopping list.

Video: Cottage Cheese Cherry Cheesecake

One way to bring homemade dairy into dessert is to use cottage cheese in cheesecake. In this video, I make a cottage cheese cherry cheesecake, offering a specific recipe example to go with the discussion below about preparing dairy ingredients in a homestead kitchen.

Yes, You Can Make Some of the Dairy Ingredients Yourself

If you have dairy animals, cheesecake becomes even more interesting because you are not automatically limited to buying every dairy ingredient at the store.

Depending on the milk you have, your equipment, and the recipe you use, you can make a variety of soft cheeses and fresh dairy products at home. A rich soft cheese can be used in desserts, and homemade cream cheese is possible as well.

The exact texture and richness will depend on the milk and method. Cow's milk, goat milk, added cream, draining time, cultures, and moisture content can all change the final result, so I would not assume every homemade soft cheese will behave exactly like a commercial block of cream cheese in every cheesecake recipe.

But if you keep dairy animals, learning to make soft cheese gives you another way to turn fresh milk into something useful and delicious.

If you are just getting started with cheesemaking, my easy homemade cheese guide is a good place to begin. I also have a recipe for goat milk cottage cheese if you are working specifically with goat milk.

Homemade Butter Can Go Into the Crust

Butter is another cheesecake ingredient that homesteaders may be able to make themselves.

A graham-style crust, cookie crust, nut crust, or crumb crust generally needs some kind of fat to hold the crumbs together. Homemade butter works beautifully for that job.

If you have goat milk and enough cream to work with, I have a goat milk butter recipe on the site as well.

Again, you do not have to make the butter yourself every time you make cheesecake. The point is that you can.

That ability is part of what I like about self-sufficiency. It isn't about proving that you made every single ingredient by hand. It is about knowing how to make more of those ingredients when you want or need to.

Fresh Eggs Make Cheesecake a Natural Fit for Poultry Keepers

If you keep chickens, ducks, or other laying poultry, baked cheesecake gives you another good way to use eggs.

Eggs help give baked cheesecake its structure and richness. During times of year when the hens are laying well, a dessert that uses several eggs can be a welcome addition to the list of ways to use the abundance.

I like recipes that connect different parts of the homestead this way. Milk from one animal, eggs from another, fruit from the garden or freezer, and preserved toppings from the pantry can all end up in one dessert.

The Crust Does Not Have to Come From a Box

Graham cracker crust is classic, but it is only one option.

You can make a cheesecake crust from:

Homemade graham-style crackers or cookies.
Gingersnaps.
Chocolate cookies.
Shortbread.
Crushed nuts.
A mixture of nuts and crumbs.
Leftover cookies that are still good but no longer at their freshest.

This is another place where a homestead kitchen can reduce waste. A batch of cookies that turned out a little too crisp may not be everyone's first choice for snacking, but those same cookies may make an excellent cheesecake crust.

I would much rather turn usable food into another dessert than throw it away.

Use Preserved Fruit for Cheesecake Toppings

One of my favorite things about cheesecake is that the basic filling gives you a fairly neutral base for whatever you have preserved.

If you grow berries, cherries, peaches, apples, raspberries, strawberries, or other fruit, cheesecake gives you another way to use that harvest long after the fresh season has ended.

Depending on what you have in the pantry or freezer, you can use:

Home-canned pie filling.
Jam or preserves.
Fruit syrup.
Frozen berries cooked into a quick sauce.
Dehydrated fruit that has been rehydrated or incorporated into a topping.
Fresh seasonal fruit when it is available.

That means the same basic cheesecake can change with the seasons without changing the whole recipe.

Cheesecake Is Excellent for Using Homemade Caramel and Sauces

Fruit is not the only direction you can go.

Caramel, chocolate sauce, berry sauces, maple syrup, flavored honey, and other homemade toppings can completely change a basic cheesecake.

If you keep goats, one especially interesting option is cajeta, a goat milk caramel. A drizzle of homemade caramel over cheesecake is a good example of taking a familiar dessert and connecting it directly to what you produce on the homestead.

Nuts, Herbs, and Other Homestead Ingredients Work Too

Cheesecake is also a good place to use smaller harvests that may not be enough for a large preservation project.

A handful of nuts can become part of a crust or topping. Fresh mint can garnish a berry cheesecake. Lemon balm, lavender, citrus zest, vanilla, maple, chocolate, pumpkin, or spices can all take a cheesecake in a completely different direction.

You do not need a massive harvest to make something special.

Homemade Does Not Have to Mean Every Ingredient Is Homemade

This is important to me because self-sufficiency can become ridiculous if we turn it into a competition.

If you make your own cream cheese but buy the graham crackers, that is still homemade cheesecake.

If you use store-bought cream cheese but top the cheesecake with your own raspberry preserves, that is still a meaningful use of your harvest.

If the eggs came from your hens, the butter came from your kitchen, and the cream cheese came from the grocery store, that is fine too.

I would much rather see someone learn one new skill and actually use it than feel like they have to produce every ingredient before they are allowed to call something homemade.

Start With a Basic Cheesecake and Build From There

A basic cheesecake gives you a foundation that can be changed dozens of ways.

You can make it plain and serve toppings on the side. That is especially useful when different people like different flavors.

You can swirl fruit preserves into the filling before baking. You can change the crust. You can add chocolate. You can make a pumpkin version in fall, berry versions in summer, apple or caramel versions in autumn, and richer chocolate or nut versions during the holidays.

You can also make smaller individual cheesecakes when you don't want to commit to one large dessert.

For another seasonal option, take a look at my mini pumpkin cheesecakes with salted caramel.

More Cheesecake Recipes on Experimental Homesteader

I already have several cheesecake recipes and cheesecake-based desserts on the site, so this article can serve as a starting point rather than trying to cram every variation into one post.

Those give you several different directions depending on whether you want something traditional, chocolate-heavy, seasonal, or a little more elaborate.

A Simple Cheesecake Recipe to Start With

The recipe below gives you a basic place to begin. Once you are comfortable with the method, start looking at what you already have in the pantry, refrigerator, freezer, garden, or dairy and build from there.

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Free Cheesecake Recipes

I still have a free cheesecake recipe collection available as well. It includes Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake, Brandied Pumpkin Cheesecake, and Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake.

Get Three Cheesecake Recipes Free

If you love trying different cheesecake flavors, I have three more recipes waiting for you: Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake, Brandied Pumpkin Cheesecake, and Sicilian Ricotta Cheesecake.

Get the Three Cheesecake Recipes Freebie →

That download gives you three more ideas to experiment with, and I especially like having it connected here now because this article is no longer tied to one calendar date. Cheesecake is useful year-round, whether you are trying to use fresh summer berries, fall pumpkin, winter pantry ingredients, or dairy that is abundant at a particular point in the season.

Cheesecake Can Be as Self-Sufficient as You Want It to Be

You do not need dairy goats, chickens, a berry patch, a pantry full of home-canned fruit, and homemade butter to make a cheesecake.

But if you have some of those things, cheesecake gives you a very good excuse to use them.

That is the part I think gets missed when cheesecake is treated only as a restaurant dessert or a once-a-year celebration food. For a homesteader, it can be another way to use milk, eggs, butter, fruit, preserves, nuts, herbs, and pantry staples in a dessert people genuinely enjoy.

Start with what you have. Make one component from scratch if that is what fits your day. Make five components from scratch if you feel like experimenting. Buy the rest without guilt.

The useful skill is knowing that you have options.