White Chocolate-Raspberry Cheesecake

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. If making homemade pie crust, melt butter in microwave, heating 30 seconds at a time until melted. Crush cookies in a bag with a rolling pin, or in a blender. Mix together cookies and melted butter. Press the crust mixture on the bottom and up the sides of a pie pan or a cheesecake pan.

Using a medium sized saucepan, fill it 1/4 of the way full with water, bring to a boil. Melt white chocolate chips and half and half in a glass bowl sitting above the saucepan. DO NOT let the water touch the bowl. (You can also use a double boiler for this – you are basically heating and melting the mixture using the steam. Or I suppose you could also melt the chocolate and half and half in the microwave – it’s probably easier. If you use the microwave, just make sure to only heat for 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between each heating, and making sure to stop once it’s melted or you’ll scorch the chocolate).

In a separate bowl, blend soft cream cheese with eggs. To make sure there are no lumps, you could use a blender.
Temper the egg mixture by spooning a small amount of the melted white chocolate into the cream cheese mixture. Slowly pour the rest of the white chocolate into the cream cheese mixture and stir to mix. Pour this mixture into pie crust.

For baking the cheesecake, I’d recommend a bain-marie (water bath). In an tall sided pan (one that is big enough to hold your pie pan), fill 1/4 or 1/3 full with hot water (just make sure you don’t put in so much that it will go over the sides of the pie pan when you put it in). Cover bottom and edges of your pie pan with foil. Place in center of bain-marie pan and bake.

Bake for 40-60 minutes, until set. Cool the cheesecake and when ready to serve, cover with raspberry filling.