Sopapilla Cheesecake

Last weekend was doubly special for myself because I celebrated Mother's Day as well as my birthday. One of my favorite parts of Mother's Day is the homemade gifts that my kids make at school. Their works of art always leave them beaming with pride as they hand it over and usually guarantee a solid giggle on my end. Like when my son wrote that I have blonde hair and brown eyes--when clearly I have dark brown hair and blue eyes. Awesome. I also loved that he answered the question of my favorite food as tock oss. He totally knows me and my obsession with tacos. But my favorite part was the picture on the back of my Mother's Day booklet. He drew a beautiful (wink, wink) Mom with blonde hair, holding a gray line with brown dots on top, which was obviously a baking sheet of cookies, standing next to the oven with the door open. And guess who was by my side in the picture? Hudson of course. Being Mama's helper.

I had a great, calm weekend with my family. My husband had quite the opposite. He was exhausted come Sunday night because he was busy ensuring I felt extra special all weekend. Cooking dinner (tock oss of course), baking dessert, renting movies, buying my favorite wine and tending to the kids. It's definitely these little things that mean the most to me.

The dessert. It was so good. So good. You may remember me telling you about sopaipillas before. If those seemed difficult or turned you off for any reason, forget that the word sopapilla is even in the title of this recipe. The two don't resemble each other at all. While this cheesecake isn't traditional, it still satifies those cheesecake lovers out there. Jason whipped up this cheesecake in probably 10 minutes and threw it in the oven while he made dinner-it was sooo simple and easy. Definitely a crowd pleaser. I love that he found a new unique recipe to try out and that we all loved it. I imagine we'll be making this again and again and again.

Sopapilla Cheesecake
serves 12

3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 ½ cups white sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 (8 ounce) cans crescent roll dough

½ cup melted butter
½ cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ cup sliced almonds

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Beat the cream cheese with 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and the vanilla extract in a bowl until smooth. Unroll the cans of crescent roll dough, and use a rolling pin to shape the each piece into 9x13 inch rectangles. Press one piece into the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Evenly spread the cream cheese mixture into the baking dish, then cover with the remaining piece of crescent dough.

Drizzle the melted butter evenly over the top of the cheesecake. Stir the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar together with the cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle over the cheesecake along with the almonds.

Bake in the preheated oven until the crescent dough has puffed and turned golden brown, about 45 minutes. Cool completely in the pan before cutting into 12 squares. (It benefits from thickening and cooling in the fridge overnight.)