After reading a tirade some comments on my Facebook regarding the sweetener I used in this cheesecake, I feel the need to preface this post by telling you I occasionally use artificial sweeteners with no guilt and no perceivable adverse effects (no headaches, no weight gain, no second head growing from my shoulder). I have lost weight while occasionally eating something sweetened with Sucralose (Splenda). It doesn't affect my blood glucose at all (especially compared to sugar), and that's a great thing to me when I want something sweet, or I am baking for myself and my family for a special occasion. I personally despise the aftertaste of Stevia, and I have gastrointestinal issues if I ingest Erythritol, honey effects me like table sugar, but for ME Sucralose is benign. If you are sensitive to artificial sweeteners, or if you have issues with Sucralose, don't use it! And you find another sweetener works better for you (even sugar), use it! If you find even the thought of sugar or sweeteners or photos of sweet treats spike your blood sugar and make you gain ten pounds, turn back! If you feel the need to lecture me and everyone else on the use of sweeteners I suggest you do it on your own Facebook or start your own blog. Making blanket statements about *anything* is not wise, nor is it intellectually honest, regardless of where or whom you heard it from that sweeteners are the devil. As with anything about low carb eating, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). But for those of you who, like myself, can tolerate some sugar substitutes and low carb sweet treats every now and then, have I got something special for you...

The one piece I hid so I could have it for lunch at work yesterday. Yum!
I LOVE cheesecake! I had a recipe I had been using for a while, but after making it the last few times I decided I could probably find a better low carb recipe, or I could convert a good cheesecake recipe to low carb myself. After scouring the Internets and coming up empty on what I thought would be a good low carb recipe for cheesecake, I stumbled upon a full sugar version that sounded wonderful:  
Perfect Cheesecake on Simply Recipes.
I used this recipe to make a cheesecake for the holidays, substituting bulk Sucralose for the sugar and my own almond flour crust for the graham cracker crust. It got rave reviews from family and friends. It IS a perfect cheesecake, so creamy, rich and delicious! Its high fat content fits in nicely with my low carb, ketogenic way of living, too!

If you've ever been intimidated by the prospect of making your own cheesecake from scratch, fear not. As long as you follow the directions it's really pretty easy, and no more time consuming than anything else from scratch. You can do it! I know you can! And the payoff is delicious.

My pointers after having made this are these:
1. After reading a comment in the recipe post someone mentioned using a crock pot liner instead of foil to keep the water out of the springform pan. I happened to have some, so I tried it and it worked like a charm!

2. I made the sour cream icing from the recipe (with Sucralose instead of powdered sugar) and didn't like it. I ended up scraping it off the piece(s) I had, as did all but one other person who had some. I intend to leave it off entirely the next time I make this.

3. I didn't have a pan big enough to do a water bath, so I picked up an aluminum roast pan at the grocery. That also worked great!

4. I do have a Kitchenaid stand mixer, but opted not to drag it out of the pantry and used a hand mixer instead. It worked just fine.

My crust recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

1 ½ C blanched almond flour
4 T butter, melted
4 t Sucralose (or other preferred sweetener)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375° F.
2. Combine almond flour and sweetener.
3. Mix in melted butter and press into bottom of springform pan.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

Proceed with the recipe for the cheesecake batter from the linked site, substituting the sweetener of your choice for sugar.

Enjoy!