This is cheesecake for a crowd!  It versatile as it can be made into bars with a small jelly roll pan, thicker bars in a 9×13 cake pan or individual mini cheesecakes in cupcake pans.

Filling

4-8 oz blocks cream cheese softened

1 can sweetened condensed milk

4 eggs-lightly beaten

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. Vanilla or Almond Flavoring

Crust

2 cups graham cracker crumbs or cookie crumbs (vanilla wafers are awesome)

1 stick butter-Melted

1/4 cup sugar

Topping

2 cans cherry pie filling

Mix crust first by adding sugar to graham cracker crumbs then stir in melted butter.  Spread evenly in bottom of pan-if using large pan gently roll a glass over it to compact it.

Filling

cream the sugar and cream cheese together then mix in sweetened condensed milk, eggs and vanilla flavoring. Beat this until almost smooth-there will be some small lumps. Pour over crust and bake in 350 degree oven checking at 20 minutes if knife inserted in center comes out clean it is done.  This bakes quickly and  over baking results in cracks from it drying out. IF it isn’t done in 20 minutes check every 5 min until center is done.

Cool then top with  Pie filling

***For cupcake pans add a heaping tablespoon of crust mixture to individual cups in the cupcake pan smash it down with a glass then proceed with filling.

For different variations try using lemon flavoring in place of vanilla flavoring and ether crushed lady fingers or vanilla wafers to replace graham cracker crumbs then top with lemon pie filling

Blueberry, raspberry and strawberry make great substitutions too!