Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake

I bought 5-lbs of cream cheese about two weeks ago. I've already planned some desserts that I will make with it. I kept the leftover 3-lb cream cheese in the fridge. A couple of days later, I found that there was some liquid coming out from the cream cheese package. It's not that it's going bad, I didn't see anything suspicious with the color or the smell. I tasted it and it tasted kind of salty. It looked like the cream cheese had separated into curd and whey, just like if you put yogurt in a cheesecloth and strain it overnight. The cream cheese texture was dry and crumbly. I didn't know why it happened. When I bought regular 8-oz package of cream cheese, the leftover stays the same as before, but not with this one. One possibility is that I kept the cream cheese on the very top shelf of my fridge and it's cooler that the one in the middle. Maybe it had gotten too cold, just as if you put it in the freezer. This is just my guess though.

So, not wanting to just throw the cream cheese in the trash, I decided to use it anyway. What is a dessert that uses a lot of cream cheese? cheesecake! and that's what I made. Not a fancy cheesecake with a whole lot of toppings, sauce, etc., but just a very standard New York cheesecake. The cream cheese just wouldn't get smooth even after beating it for 15 minutes and mixing it with other ingredients. There were a lot of small granules (whatever you call it) in the batter. However I beat it, it just wouldn't disappear. When I put it in the oven, I knew those small bits will still there even after baking.

So here it is. You can see the texture is not as smooth as a good cheesecake should be. But tastewise, I think it was really good. I put some lemon zests in the batter, vanilla (of course), and raspberry swirl on the top.

I'm still not giving up though. I'll bake a better one next time