Christmas Fruit Cheesecake Tart

We love Christmas to the core and I especially get a little carried away from decorating to baking/cooking. Christmas is all about sharing/caring. Christmas bakes make excellent edible gifts for friends, neighbors, colleagues and teachers. I have already made a Dark Chocolate Orange Brownie Christmas Tree and shared with my daughter's friends. It's fun to shape Christmas tree with chocolate or jam drizzle.Today I have made an amazing festive tart with a smooth and creamy filling along with dried fruits bursting with orange flavor and topped with strawberry jam drizzle to decorate little Christmas trees. It's a wonderful show stopper for Christmas table and the perfect way to indulge Christmas lunch or dinner with family and friends.It tastes absolutely divine.

This is a very easy recipe to put together. We all enjoy homemade cheesecake with less guilt because I use 1/3 less fat cream cheese, low fat sour cream and less sugar in all my cheesecake recipes and they always turn out sinfully delicious. The tart base is made of simple pie dough but you can use graham cracker crumbs to skip making the pie dough from scratch. I played around with the dried fruit but didn't go over board. Make this tart a couple of days before and keep it in the fridge until the big day. 

Ingredients~

For the filling (keep everything at room temperature)~

12 oz 1/3 less fat cream cheese

1/2 cup low fat sour cream

1/3 -1/2 cup sugar

1 small egg
1/4 cup freshly squeeze orange juice

1 tsp. orange zest

1/3 cup dried fruit 
4 tbsp. strawberry jam 
Festive sprinkles(optional)

For the crust~

1 cup all purpose flour

A little pinch of salt

1 tsp. sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 tbsp. or as needed, ice cold water

Method~ 
Keep ingredients for the crust as cold as possible. Mix the first 3 ingredients in a large mixing bowl and then transfer in the food processor or mini food chopper. Add in the butter and use pulse button to process until mixture becomes coarse meal or use your finger tips to mix. Now pour 1 tbsp. cold water at a time until dough starts to stick together. Dough should be not too tough but just firm. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Try to make round firm ball, then flatten to form a disk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll out from the center to the edge on a lightly floured surface until 1/8 inch thickness and 12 inch round circle. Transfer to a 8 or 9 inch tart pan. Pat the rolled dough onto the bottom and up the sides of the tart pan. Trim the overhangs. 

Pierce the dough all over with a fork so crust won't puff up while baking. Line the crust with a parchment paper. Add dried beans to fill the pan. Chill the crust for 30 minutes.

Bake the crust for 10 minutes. Remove parchment paper and beans and bake another 10 minutes and cool it on a wire rack. Mix cream cheese, sugar, orange zest, orange juice vanilla extract and egg until smooth. Divide batter in half. Mix dried fruit with little flour and mix with the half batter. Pour the fruit mixed batter into pie shell first and plain batter on top. Smooth out the cake batter with a spatula. Tap the pan a couple of times on the counter. Place the tart pan on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 18- 20 minutes to set. Make sure not to over bake. Remove from the oven and let it cool completely on a wire rack. 

Remove cake from pan and transfer to serving plate. Slice the cheesecake into 8 pieces. Spoon jam into a zipper bag. Seal and cut a very tiny tip off the corner of the bag. Gently drizzle over the cheesecake triangles to form Christmas trees. Sprinkle some festive sprinkles. Enjoy this unique cheesecake tart with your dear ones. Have a wonderful holiday time!!

Note~ Since it is winter cheesecake becomes pretty firm quickly even at the room temperature and when refrigerated. I usually warm it up in the microwave for 15 seconds each slice just before serving .