Lime Cheesecake Parfait and PicMonkey Pro

At Trevor's request, I made individual lime cheesecake parfaits for Christmas Eve. I had fun tinkering with the recipe, which I based on the Mint Cheesecake Mousse that I'd made earlier in the month. It was delicious - tart and sweet, with layers of graham cracker and plenty of whipped cream. (This post contains affiliate links.)

Before serving, I snapped a really quick photo of one sitting on the countertop in our dark kitchen. I prefer to photograph food in our dining room, during daylight hours, with a proper background. But it was evening, I was in a hurry, and dessert and board games were much higher on my priority list than getting a decent photo. I figured at least I'd documented it. At this point, I wasn't even sure if the recipe would be worth sharing here on the blog, so the photo might not even matter. This is the photo I took, straight from the camera. 

The parfait was really good and I definitely wanted to share it on the blog, which ordinarily would mean playing around with exposure and color options on PicMonkey until I got something acceptable. But a Christmas gift to myself changed everything....

After several happy years with PicMonkey Basic, I upgraded myself to PicMonkey Pro. With the switch, I gained access to (among many other features) the background remover tool. It literally took one click and three seconds to remove the countertop background and leave me with just the parfait on its saucer. 

With one more click, I could change the background to black...

... or use the eyedropper tool to make the background the exact same color as the darker green of the lime zest garnish... 

.... or the lighter green of the garnish. 

The background remover tool is a game-changer for me, as are some of the other features of PicMonkey Pro. I was able to move my brand kit directly into PicMonkey, which puts my brand colors, fonts, watermark, etc. front and center when I edit a photo or make a collage. That's going to save me a few minutes on every single photo, which will add up to massive time savings over the course of the year. I haven't explored all of the Pro features yet, but just the ones I've used so far make it totally worth it to me. 

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Lime Cheesecake Parfait

Ingredients:

• 1 c. heavy cream
• 3/4 c. powdered sugar, divided
• 1 pkg (8 oz.) cream cheese
• 2 limes, zested and juiced
• 1 sleeve of graham crackers, crushed

Steps: 

Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Add 1/4 c. powdered sugar and whip until stiff peaks form. Set the whipped cream aside. 

In a separate bowl, whip the cream cheese until light and fluffy, approximately 2 minutes on the highest speed. Add the remaining 1/2 c. of powdered sugar and then the lime juice. Spoon half of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture and fold to combine. 

Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs into 6 individual ramekins. Add a layer of the cream cheese mixture, then a thin layer of whipped cream onto each. Sprinkle more graham cracker crumbs on top, then repeat the layers. Garnish with the remaining whipped cream and the lime zest. 

You can serve them immediately, but they're even better after they chill for a few hours. They're also really good frozen. This recipe makes six servings.