Recipe Recap: Lemon Cheesecake and Strawberry Dessert Sauce

So Bruce isn't into sweet sweets. When I offered to make a dessert for the birthday cookout a couple weekends ago, Heather mentioned that Bruce would prefer something along the lines of a lemon cheesecake to the usual birthday cake or brownies. I'd recently starred a lemon cheesecake in my Google Reader so I figured it was a sign that I NEEDED to make this cheesecake.

There were three parts to the recipe: the crust, the filling, and the curd. None of the parts was difficult, but the overall process was fairly time-consuming. I'd say it was worth it though. The cheesecake was a success!
















I decided that it would be good to offer a dessert sauce with the cheesecake. Most of the time, you'll see a lemon-raspberry combo, but I had frozen strawberries and didn't want to mess with straining the raspberry seeds. I used this recipe as a guideline. I used two cups of frozen strawberry halves, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and a little corn syrup. Once the concoction was heated through and the strawberries had released all their goodness, I put it all in the blender and voila! Strawberry dessert sauce.
















The sauce was delicious! It was really good on vanilla ice cream, and I imagine it would be tasty mixed into some plain Greek yogurt. And look how pretty it was against the yellow cheesecake. (Please excuse the terrible photography.)
















Here I am enjoying my cheesecake down to the last bite.