A smooth-as-silk Key lime cheesecake with a crust made of crushed gingersnaps for a hint of spice! A perfect addition to your Shavuot celebration.

The next Jewish holiday after Passover is Shavuot, which commerates when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai. This year Shavuot begins at sundown on May 19. It is a very happy occasion, as you might imagine, and the traditional food for Shavuot is…dairy?

So, as always, there are several different explanation of why it is traditional to eat dairy on Shavuot. First, let me just point out that Shavuot comes in the spring which happens be when, in pre-industrial times, cows would be giving birth to calves and farmers would have a ready supply of milk. For the same reason, spring was the traditional time of year for cheese-making. (That’s how people made their milk surplus last all year.) But beyond this very practical explanation, there are many religious ones as well.

The story I always heard about why we eat dairy on Shavuot is that, once the Israelites received the Torah and learned about the kosher laws, they could not eat any of their meat, which would not have been butchered properly. So they simply ate dairy. There are other explanations too, such as that we eat dairy to symbolize how the Israelites were promised a “land of milk and honey.”

Whatever the reason, it is nice to have a holiday celebration that doesn’t require a big hunk of meat. Some of the foods that we commonly eat on Shavuot are blintzes and, of course, cheesecake.

I had been planning to make a Key lime pie all winter, but despite my best efforts, I never saw Key limes in the store. Then, the other day, months after I expected to find them, I ran across a bag of Key limes in the produce department at Whole Foods. So, naturally I bought them. But somehow, I wasn’t in the mood for pie any more. Instead, now that it is almost Shavuot, I decided to make a Key lime cheesecake.

If you cannot source Key limes yourself for any reason, use regular limes and sub out one tablespoon of the lime juice with lemon juice. You can find bottled Key Lime juice but I think freshly squeezed juice from regular limes is preferable to bottled anything. Just me.

Key lime pie usually has a graham cracker crust, but guess what? I don’t love graham crackers — unless they are homemade. And making homemade graham crackers just to pulverize them into crumbs for a pie crust is too much work even for me. I couldn’t in good conscience suggest any of you do that.

But you know what I do like? Gingersnaps. And ginger is a classic pairing with lime. So my Key lime cheesecake has a gingersnap crust. Any store-bought gingersnaps will do. I used Anna’s Swedish Thins because they are not too sweet and have a very crisp texture that I knew would make very fine, sandy crumbs. I actually carry the ginger flavor throughout the dish by adding a pinch of ground ginger to the cheesecake as well as to the whipped cream topping. It really is the perfect complement to the lime.

Cheesecake is one of those desserts that gives people fits. We all want a creamy, light cheesecake that makes you go weak in the knees at that first bite. But too often we end up with a rubbery, dense cheesecake or a cracked top. Pro tip: if you cover the top with whipped cream as I do here, no one knows if it has cracks or not. You don’t even know if mine had any cracks.

(P.S. It did. One big one. Despite me doing everything right. So forget about it. Cracks happen to us all.)

When developing this recipe, I consulted The Kitchn’s guide to making a perfect cheesecake and that post has some great tips. Like using a stabilizer, such as corn starch, and cooling the cake gradually. But, the nice people at The Kitchn want you to put your cheesecake directly in a water bath for gentle, steamy cooking. That sounds like a great way to get water in your cheesecake, which is gross.

You can achieve the same results with less mess by adding a separate pan of steamy water to the oven while your cheesecake is baking. Be sure to do all the other stuff I tell you too: don’t overbeat the batter; cool the cheesecake gradually etc. And I promise, you will have a rich, creamy, light cheesecake with maybe only one crack. Or even zero cracks! Who knows?

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Key Lime Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

Ingredients

Crust
• 2 cups gingersnap crumbs (from approximately 6-7 oz gingersnap cookies)
• 6 TB butter, melted
Filling
• 2 lbs. cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 TB cornstarch
• Pinch salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 8 Key limes (if using regular limes, may need fewer)
• 3 eggs and 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp ground ginger
Topping
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 TB sugar (preferably caster or superfine sugar)
• 1 tsp ground ginger

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan.
2. Mix the gingersnap crumbs and melted butter together in a medium bowl with a fork. (To make the gingersnap crumbs, pulverize the gingersnaps in the food processor into they resemble fine sand.)
3. Pour the crumbs into the prepared pan and press down firmly - the bottom of a drinking glass works well for this. You can also press some of the crumbs up the side of the pan to form an edge.
4. Bake the crust for 8-10 minutes until toasted and fragrant. Remove pan to a wire rack and allow to cool. Turn the heat down to 300.
5. Prepare the filling by combining the cream cheese, sugar, cornstarch and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat until smooth and thoroughly combined.
6. Zest and juice the limes. You should have around 6 TB lime juice.
7. Add the sour cream, lime juice and zest, and ginger to the cream cheese mixture and beat until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides as necessary, and beat just until combined. (Do not overmix once the eggs have been added because the extra air can cause the cheesecake to crack.)
8. Pour the cheesecake batter on top of the cooled crust and smooth the top.
9. Fill a 9x13 pan with several inches of boiling water and place it on a lower oven rack. Place the cheesecake on a rack above the pan with the water. (The water will create steam which will help prevent the cheesecake from drying out or cracking.)
10. Bake at 300 for 50-55 minutes until the edges are set but the middle still jiggles.
11. Turn off the oven and crack the door. Allow the cheesecake to cool in the oven for 30 minutes before removing to a wire rack. (This gentle cooling will also help prevent cracks.)
12. Run a thin knife around the edge of the cheesecake to make sure that the sides do not stick to the pan while cooling. (Also can cause cracks.) Cool completely on a wire rack.
13. Chill (uncovered) for at least four hours prior to serving.
14. To make the topping, whip the cream in a stand mixer outfitted with the whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar and ginger and whip until stiff peaks form.
15. Prior to serving, allow cheesecake to come to room temperature for 30 minutes. Garnish with the whipped cream and additional citrus zest.

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