Ingredients:

Crumb Crust

1 ½ c. graham cracker crumbs (about 15 squares)

½ c. sugar

 ½ t. cinnamon

¼ c. melted butter

Cheesecake Filling

2 eggs

½ c. sugar

2 t. vanilla

1 ½ c. sour cream

2-8 oz. pkgs. Cream cheese, cut into pieces

2 T. melted butter

1 qt. fresh strawberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400^o. Generously grease a 9 ½ inch deep dish pie plate with shortening.  You can buy graham cracker crumbs already prepared, or break 3-4  whole graham cracker squares and put in blender. Blend on high to turn into crumbs.  Dump them into bowl and repeat with remaining graham crackers. Add sugar, cinnamon and melted butter to the graham cracker crumbs in bowl and mix with fork until well moistened.  Using the back of a spoon, press crust into pie plate.  Bake at 400 degrees for 6 minutes. While crust is baking, wash out blender to remove any remaining crumbs and combine eggs, sugar, vanilla and sour cream in blender and mix until smooth.  With blender running, & add cream cheese one piece at a time until blended. (I just remove the handle and drop the cream cheese in the hole) Add melted butter and blend until incorporated.  Pour into prepared crust.  Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for 25-30 minutes. It will still jiggle in the center and will firm as it cools. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.  Garnish with halved fresh strawberries that have been tossed with a little sugar.

NOTE: To make this recipe vegan, use Cheerios for the crust (4 c. Cheerios will give you 1 ½ c. crumbs), double the amount of cinnamon and vegan butter for the crust.  For the filling, use Tofutti sour cream and cream cheese and vegan butter.  Instead of 2 eggs, put 4 Tablespoons of arrowroot in a cup and add 4 Tablespoons of cold water, stirring to dissolve. Add to filling mixture. (When baking a cake, you can use applesauce or smashed bananas to substitute for eggs, but these will not work in custard.)