Cheesecake in a Bag
Instant cheesecake pudding, powdered milk, and crushed grahams. Sets up cold in twenty minutes.
- calories
- 610
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 153
- protein
- 9 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 5 min
- water
- 180 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- No cook
- Cold soak
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Canoe / raft
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Instant cheesecake pudding mix | 1 box (3.4 oz) | the no-cook kind, not the one that needs a stove |
|---|---|---|
| Whole milk powder | 1/3 cup | whole, not skim, or it comes out thin |
| Graham crackers | 5 sheets | crushed at home |
| Coconut oil | 2 tbsp | melted into the crumbs before you leave |
| Brown sugar | 1 tbsp | |
| Citric acid or lemonade powder | 1/4 tsp | stands in for the tang of real cream cheese |
| Dried fruit | 1/4 cup | freeze-dried strawberries or raspberries |
Method
- Pour 180 ml of cold water into the pudding bag. Cold matters. Warm water leaves it soupy.
- Seal out the air and knead the bag for two minutes until there are no dry pockets left.
- Let it sit twenty minutes in the shade, or in a creek if you have one.
- Squeeze the crumb bag to break up any clumps, then spoon the set filling over the crumbs, or eat straight from the bag and dip the crumbs in.
- Crush the dried fruit over the top.
The original is a fridge recipe: block cream cheese, whipped heavy cream, six hours to set. None of that travels. Instant cheesecake pudding plus whole milk powder gets you the same thickened, tangy body from two dry powders and cold water, and the starch does the setting instead of gelatin and refrigeration.
The crust does not get baked or pressed here, so treat it as crumbs rather than a base. Working the coconut oil into the crumbs at home is what keeps them from turning into dust, and it puts most of the fat and calories in the bag you can eat by the handful if the pudding somehow fails to set.
Packing
Two bags. One holds pudding mix, milk powder, and citric acid. The other holds the crumbs, brown sugar, and coconut oil, worked together at home so the oil is already in the crumbs and not loose in your pack.
Variations
- Cocoa powder in the pudding bag turns it into chocolate cheesecake.
- A crushed handful of pretzels instead of grahams gets you salted crust.
- In cold weather it sets in about ten minutes instead of twenty.
https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/no-bake-cheesecake