Gluten free, egg free cheesecake trials

I grew up in Indiana, mostly in Sheridan and Indianapolis, and every potluck and family get together had cheesecake for dessert.  It was my mom's favorite and I really like it too.  Fast forward 40some years and I'm now allergic to wheat and egg yolks.  This makes that traditional cheesecake with a graham cracker crust something that makes me feel crappy for several days.  So I had given up eating cheesecake except for once or twice a year and only at a restaurant.  Which I did when we went to Canada in January.

The restaurant on site at the condo had a Bailey's cheesecake and I tried it the first day we were there. It was delicious but I could taste just a bit of gelatin in it.  And I woke up feeling fine the next day. This started me on a quest for a recipe that I could do at home.

First try, the Knox recipe on the box.  We have a big box of Knox gelatin because I use it to make panna cotta in the summertime when the berries are sweet and plentiful to go on top.  It needs the fruit because it's fairly bland without them.  Since this works so well, I was hoping that the cheesecake recipe on the box would also.  Not so much.  Tastes a lot of gelatin, came out fairly flat, and was easily overwhelmed by the gingersnap cookie crust.  It was so much a failure, I threw away the photos.

The winner on a 6" plate

Second try was a recipe I found online at SimplyRecipes under no-bake-cheesecake.  It uses whipping cream in addition to gelatin and is very fast and easy to put together.  I was declaring it the winner before the cheesecake went into the fridge to chill.  It has the right mouth texture, no taste of gelatin and makes a medium height cheesecake quite nicely.   Setting for a couple of hours was not quite long enough to get the filling to bond to the crust adequately but that was okay, it was still delicious.  The next day, the bonding issue was gone and the only comments I got from Jeff was that the slices should be just a bit smaller because it's so rich.  I mean, who wants to throw away the last few bites of cheesecake because there's no more room, right?  I cut it into 8 pieces like a pie but will make the slices smaller next time.

Third one will be a chocolate one that uses sweetened condensed milk and I'll do that over the weekend or early next week.  But I can absolutely declare my cheesecake yearnings to be satisfied.