Weekend Cooking: (Wedding) Cheese Pie

**This is a post that I revamped from my never-got-off-the-ground cooking blog, Down Home Girl Cooks. Maybe one day I'll go back to it -- especially during the summer months -- but for now, I'll combine all sorts of posts on A Worn Path, bookish or not.**

On my wedding day, I got up fairly early. 7am saw me putting in a load of laundry, making a run to my local Wal-Mart, and... baking Cheese Pies. Yep, you read that right -- I was baking and doing laundry the morning of my wedding! You see, my guy doesn't really like regular cake, so I had decided his groom's cake would be cheesecake -- a treat he loves. In all the preparations and decorating, I hadn't had time to bake, until that morning.

Cheese Pie is a recipe that has been in my family for years. I don't remember who originally made it or where the recipe came from, but it's been a favorite for more than a decade. We call it Cheese Pie because it's sort of a cross between a cheesecake and, well, a pie. It actually bakes up into its own crust with a cheesecake-like center and a sour cream topping. Not overly sweet, like cheesecake can sometimes be, but instead pretty perfect.

Cheese Pie Recipe

Pie:
2 - 8oz packages of cream cheese (softened -- let it sit outside refrigerator or soften it in the microwave by zapping for no more than 5-10 seconds)
3/4 c sugar
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter glass pie pan and set aside. Beat cream cheese with hand mixer until smooth with a whipped texture. Add eggs and sugar. Mix well, until creamy and pourable. Pour into a buttered pie pan and bake for 50 minutes. Take out and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Leave the oven on, as you'll be returning the pie to the oven soon. In the meantime, mix up the topping.

Topping:
8 oz sour cream
1/4 c sugar
1 t vanilla extract

Mix all three together until smooth. When pie has cooled for 20 minutes, pour topping into the center that's been created as the pie cooled. Return to the oven and bake for an additional 15 minutes. Take pie out and allow to cool completely. Refrigerate for a minimum of 2-3 hours, or longer if necessary, until serving.

This post is part of the Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking series. According to her blog, "Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs." It's a fun way to start the weekend off, with lots of links to recipes and all things foodie. To see this week's links, click here.