Foods Cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts, and thankfully it’s a fairly simple dessert to turn low-carb and gluten-free. While I needed to completely change the crust (graham crackers just wouldn’t do), the only thing I needed to do to change the filling was alter the sweeteners in my favorite go-to New York Style Cheesecake recipe!
Looking for gluten-free recipes and resources? This Everything Gluten Free page is a library of everything gluten free we’ve worked on.
Cheesecakes come in all varieties and I don’t think I’ve ever met one I didn’t like. Really, how can you go wrong with creamy smooth deliciousness?
I have a dream to one day make a whole book full of low-carb, gluten-free cheesecake recipes. How awesome would that be?
But before I get that far ahead of myself, starting with a basic New York style cheesecake seemed to be the way to go. While this is what I’d call a “basic” cheesecake, there is nothing boring about it.
You can dress this cheesecake up or eat it as is. I personally enjoy dressing it up with fresh sliced strawberries and a small dollop of homemade whipped cream on each slice.
But since the cake is a fairly blank slate, you can decorate it for any occasion! Drizzle with a low-carb chocolate sauce, a berry sauce (berries are a low-sugar fruit), sprinkle on chopped nuts, or pipe whipped cream around the edges.
All the flavor of New York style cheesecake with less carbs!
This cheesecake is not only gluten-free, it’s Keto-friendly! Most cheesecakes are loaded with sugar, but this recipe uses stevia and xylitol instead. You can substitute your favorite low-carb sweeteners if you prefer. Just adjust the amount to your taste. Since it’s considerably better for you than typical cheesecake, you could enjoy this recipe for breakfast as well as dessert– I won’t tell! It is rich, so a small slice is usually plenty, and quite satisfying. This would be considered a THM heavy S, due to the amount of dairy.
New York Style Cheesecake – Low-Carb & Gluten-Free
Equipment
- Mixer (stand or handheld)
- Springform pan
Ingredients
Crust
- 1 cup almond flour
- 4 tablespoons coconut flour
- 3 tablespoons flaxseed meal
- 1/4 cup xylitol
- 1/2 cup butter
Cheesecake
- 2 1/2 pounds cream cheese
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 cups xylitol
- 1/2 teaspoon pure stevia powder
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 large egg yolks
- 6 large whole eggs
Instructions
- Cut cream cheese into 1 inch chunks and let stand at room temp for 45 minutes.
- Mix together all ingredients for the crust and press into the bottom of a 10 inch springform pan.
- Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
For each of the steps below (4-11) beat the ingredients in a large bowl on medium speed for 1 minute then scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
- Start with cream cheese
- Add salt and half of xylitol
- Add remainder of xylitol and stevia
- Add sour cream, lemon juice, and vanilla
- Add egg yolks
- Add 2 eggs
- Add 2 more eggs
- Add last 2 eggs
- Pour into springform pan and bake for 10 minutes
- Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees and bake for 1 1/2 hours.
- Do not open the oven door to check on cheesecake!
- After you remove the cheesecake from the oven, run a knife between the cake and pan.
- Cool on the countertop for 3 hours.
- Wrap tightly with Saran wrap and refrigerate overnight.
Notes
Nutrition
More delicious cheesecake recipes
Looking for more delicious cheesecake recipes? Check out a few of my favorites…
- Egg Nog Cheesecake with Cranberry Glaze —this is a Christmas favorite in this house!
- Peanut Butter & Chocolate Cheesecake — peanut butter cheesecake with a brownie crust and chocolate ganache. Yum!
- Turtle Cheesecake Bars — one of my favorite combos. Cheesecake with caramel, fudge, and pecans.
- No-Bake Refrigerator Blueberry Cheesecake — a super refreshing summer dessert!
- Pumpkin Spice Dairy-Free Cheesecake — you can have your cheesecake without the dairy!
- Strawberry Coconut No-Bake Cheesecake Trifles — an easy recipe combining fresh summery flavors.
Thank you so much for sharing a gluten-free cheesecake recipe. Cheesecake is one of my all-time favourite desserts and I have been dreaming about a cheesecake that I can eat since being advised to go on a gluten free diet/lifestyle. I tried a recipe a while ago that was an absolute flop! I will definitely be trying this one soon. Could you tell me if you have ever tried this recipe with a more conventional sweetener such as organic cane sugar or honey – I would prefer not to buy a sweetener just to try one recipe and the cane sugar and honey are staples in our home so I would prefer to use them. Would I need to adjust any of the other ingredients, would I simply be substituting my sweetener of choice equally for the sweetener you have used?
Sorry for the long comment but cheesecake is serious business! 🙂
You’re right! Cheesecake is serious business and luckily very easy to change transform recipes to be low carb and gluten free. You can most certainly use cane sugar in place of the sweeteners. In the crust substitute 1/4 cup of sugar for the xylitol. In the. Cheesecake substitute 1 1/2 cups of suga for the xylitol and stevia. Let me know how it works out for you! I love this super moist and dense cheesecake. I might have to make one soon 🙂
Thanks for the reply! I will try my very best to remember to come back and let you know how mine turned out. 🙂
Wow! A cheesecake that is low-carb? I can’t wait to try it. Thanks so much for linking up with “Try a New Recipe Tuesday!” 🙂 Many blessings, Lisa
Just found this blog post. Wanted to let you all know that I have had the pleasure of eating Trisha’s low-carb cheesecake and it is FABULOUS! I can usually taste sugar-substitues and don’t care for them. When I tried Trisha’s cheesecake, I was blissfully surprised. Even my husband, who is not sugar-free, loved it.
We love Cheesecake and your recipe looks delicious! Thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday and have a fun weekend!
Miz Helen
Delicious crust! Thanks for sharing! I have recently embraced eating low-carb and refined sugar-free and I was searching for a good almond/coconut flour crust for another basic cheesecake recipe. This was perfect! Made it tonight for my great-grandma’s birthday! 🙂
Great! I’m glad to hear it worked out well for you 🙂
This looks delicious! I saw your link over on Mouthwatering Mondays 🙂 I have been trying out xylitol more recently, but have not use it in baking. I love the look of this crust and hope to try it soon! 🙂 ~Aubree
Your Cheesecake looks just wonderful – so pretty with the strawberries! Love that it’s low carb and gluten free too. Thank you for sharing it with us at the Hearth and Soul hop. Pinned 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Your New York Style Cheesecake looks marvelous! Have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend and thanks so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday.
Be safe and come back soon!
Miz Helen
This looks amazing! I’ve just pinned it to my Low Carb board on Pinterest. Thanks for sharing your recipe.
If you have a minute to spare I would be thrilled if you could share your post at my Say G’day Saturday Linky Party. It has just started and this would be a great addition!
Best wishes,
Natasha in Oz
Thanks Natasha! I’d be happy to share on your link up. Where do you blog? I noticed you linked to your G+ not your blog 🙂
I’ve always wanted to learn how to make cheesecakes but too scared to try! Pinning this until I find the courage. LOL
Oh, it’s not hard. Just follow the directions and you’ll do fine 🙂
Would you describe this cheesecake recipe light and fluffy or smooth and dense?
This is definitely a dense cheesecake.
The cheesecake is in the oven and we’re so excited to try it, but Trisha, can you tell me what size springform you use? We couldn’t fit all of the filling in ours. We have at least 1/4 of the filling leftover! I’ll just use it to make some minis in a ramekin or some such but it made me wonder….
Yes, I should have included that. My apologies! This recipe uses a 10 inch springform pan and it’s usually quite full too. How did it turn out?
Our springform must be an 8in. It doesn’t say on it and I don’t remember.
How’d it turn out? It. Is. Delicious! Thanks for the recipe. Our only thing we may play with next time is bumping up the tartness. We like a tangy cheesecake though. This one is lovely. We portioned it, froze it and pull out a piece when we want.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! 🙂
I,d like to try this cheescake but I don’t like the unnatural sweet. I think i’ll try to bake it with rawsugar (brown sugar) and not so much sugar.
I promise to comment how it will taste.
I don’t like unnatural sweet either. I think the xylitol/stevia combo is a really great way to combine sweeteners to get a good natural taste. It’s not like the weird chemicaly taste that splenda and aspartame leave. But, definitely let us know how your raw sugar version turns out, I’m sure there are others who might like to try it that way too!
This cheesecake is soo good. I cannot recommend it enough and I followed the recipe for the cheesecake exactly. I made a blueberry sauce and strawberry sauce and a shortcake style crust!
Thanks for coming back and letting me know how it turned out. I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed it! 🙂
I’m going to make this first thing tomorrow morning and hope it’s cooled by dinnertime. 🙂 I’m planning to use a mixture of stevia and a little maple syrup (I know it will alter the flavor), and since the syrup is a liquid rather than a granulated sweetener I’m considering leaving the 2 egg yolks out of the filling. Any thoughts/advice about this?
Also, is the flaxseed meal in the crust to keep the crust from being too crumbly? I haven’t any flaxseed meal and am thinking of adding one egg white instead, or maybe some chia or psyllium husk. Thoughts?
Thanks so much! This is the best-looking gf, low glycemic cheesecake recipe I’ve found all day.
Hi Anna,
My apologies for not getting back to you right away. I wasn’t on my computer much over the holidays. Did you end up trying the cheesecake with stevia and maple syrup? I know the flavor would be different, but I imagine still good – I enjoy maple! As for the crust, my bet is chia would have made a better replacement than psyllium husk, but I’d like to know what you did.
Let me know how it it turned out if you did make these modifications. Always good to see the options other people use. 🙂
As
I’m eating the leftovers right now. 🙂 My friend who never consumes stevia said she could taste it a little in the cheesecake, but I can’t really. I used a dash of maple syrup and a few drops of stevia in the crust (turned out a just bit too sweet for my taste) and probably 1/2 c maple syrup plus about 20 drops stevia in the filling. It’s very tasty.
I added 1 egg white to the crust. Turned out fine. I might blind bake the crust a bit next time as it wasn’t as crunchy as I wanted.
The bake times/temps seemed off to me. I did the recommended 10 mins at 500F but then had to bake it for at least another 2 hours which included turning the oven up to 350 for a while. Maybe I didn’t get the oven quite hot enough at first (I’m using an RV oven and have no thermometer.
I added more vanilla and more lemon than was called for. The vanilla because I like vanilla a lot, and the lemon because I like lemon and also because I didn’t have sour cream and subbed a mixture of whipping cream and a little full-fat plain yogurt. I added more juice and two drops lemon essential oil (DoTerra, in case anyone’s wondering). Next time I’ll add still more lemon.
Oh, I was also out of almond flour, so I used cashew flour for the crust instead.
Thanks for the recipe! It’s a winner. I plan to modify it to include some passionfruit purée I have in the fridge. 🙂
Glad to hear it turned out great! Sorry to hear about the cook time. That’s so odd it didn’t work out. I’ve made this cheesecake a LOT and it’s always worked out for me, but it could be a difference in ovens – maybe like you said yours runs a little low? Or maybe mine a little hot?
Either way, glad it worked out. Sounds like yummy substitutions you made. I think a lemon cheesecake would be delightful! Actually, I have a lemon, white chocolate cheesecake I’ve been wanting to remake into a healthy cheesecake. I should work on that soon 🙂
This was truly sensational, and a great way to start the new year. I tried making another sugar free cheesecake recently and it was terrible – bland and too heavy. This was creamy and delicious. Thanks, and I hope you all have a great year in 2016!
The only changes we made to the recipe were that we didn’t use a crust, and we used vanilla powder rather than vanilla extract. So, it was really super low carbohydrate.
Hi David,
So good to hear you enjoyed the cheesecake! Thanks for sharing your modifications. I’ve never used vanilla powder before, but I can’t imagine it would make much of a difference at all. Blessings to you in 2016!
I love cheesecake and low carb is even better! This sounds delicious but I just want to warn anyone who is a dog lover that xylitol is absolutely deadly for dogs. Do not let your dog have even a taste. When I found out about it, I threw my xylitol out. Can’t take a chance. But there are plenty of ways to make this recipe with other sweeteners!
Yes, this is true about dogs and you can certainly sub out the xylitol for something else – I’d suggest erythritol as a substitute. Though, just an FYI there are other ingredients that may be in your home that are also extremely toxic to your dogs. I was recently surprised to learn, raw onions and garlic are one of the most common extremely toxic ingredients to dogs! Be sure to keep those away from your canine friend too.
Considering trying this without the stevia (because we don’t have any and because I tend to hate the taste of stevia). Do you think it would still be good without it?
It would still be fine, but you’d probably want to add something else to increase the sweetness of the dish (could be more xylitol or some erythritol?). I am very picky about stevia. I find it’s good as long as you are using a good quality brand (that doesn’t have any fillers) and are using it alongside another sweetener – my preference is xylitol.
I am trying this cheesecake today but was wanting to know serving sizes and the carbs in this recipe . I did not see it in the recipe. Thank you
Hi Sue,
I’m sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I don’t have carbs per slice because I know the ingredients people can use can vary a little bit.