So I made the (can be seen as some as a) mistake of purchasing a Costco container of blueberries, and the consequence of doing that is now I have more blueberries than I know what to do with. I personally have always loved blueberry compote or jam on top of a baked cheesecake, so my mind just drifted there right away. Whenever I think of cheesecakes, I always think of basque cheesecake first, then the jiggly souffle cheesecake, then the no-bake cheesecake, like a tofu rare cheesecake, and finally, the classic American baked cheesecake. Ironically, I would say that the baked cheesecake and the souffle ones are the two that I have the most childhood memories consuming. One of the rare instances where my mom baked us stuff was her making an American style cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. It was probably one of the few times I had ever seen my mom bake something fully from scratch without using a box mix. And after school, mom would always give us some sort of baked good from the local Taiwanese bakery(shoutout to J.J. Bakery in Torrance!), and that would usually be a piece of soft Japanese cheesecake. In either case, baked cheesecake tend to remind me of my mother for those two reasons.

For this cheesecake, I wanted to incorporate the blueberries, but black sesame as well. Blueberries add a mildly pleasant tartness, while the black sesame adds a nuttiness and smokiness that play off of that and sugar beautifully. I have done a black sesame cheesecake as well in the past, and figured, why not combine the two concepts together? The end result was a black sesame crusted baked cheesecake, rippled with homemade blueberry compote, and a whopping pile of that same blueberry compote on top. The funniest part was even after making the compote, I still had about half of my blueberries left, so that resulted in a couple other blueberry recipes that I will be posting throughout the year, just to space them out a bit. This blueberry cheesecake is fun because a. it’s a baked cheesecake with a fully baked crust, and b. it features a cheesecake filling that is swirled with the homemade blueberry jam, just to make sure that you do not miss the blueberry flavor. It was a ton of fun to make, and while it only half-accomplished my goal of using up my Costco blueberries, it still made for a delicious afternoon snack.

For the black sesame crust:
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ground black sesame powder
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
a pinch of salt

In a bowl, mix everything together to form a dough. Refrigerate the dough for 10 minutes. Then on a floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1/8-inch thickness. Transfer the dough into a 6-inch ring mold, and weigh it down with parchment and baking weights. Bake at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes. Then remove the parchment and baking weights and continue baking for another 15 minutes.

For the blueberry jam:
8oz blueberries, in two parts
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
a pinch of salt

In a pot, stir half of the blueberries with the all of the sugar, lemon juice, and salt on low heat constantly until the blueberries are completely broken down. Take the pot off heat and stir in the remaining blueberries. Allow the jam to fully cool before attempting to use.

For the cheesecake filling:
6oz cream cheese
2oz granulated sugar
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2oz heavy cream
1oz lemon juice

In a bowl, whip together the cream cheese, sugar, eggs, salt, and vanilla. In another container, mix together the heavy cream with lemon juice and slowly stir that into the softened cream cheese. Pour and swirl about 1/4 of the blueberry jam into the filling. Then pour the filling into the baked black sesame crust and bake at 325 degrees F for 50 minutes. Allow the cheesecake to fully cool before unmolding and garnishing with the remaining blueberry jam.