bake the perfect cheesecake

I made a cheesecake for a bring and share morning tea at work. It had to be good cause I had a bit of a competition on between me and this guy who made home-baked apple pie… And mine got eaten first!! Wootwoo!! I made it with ricotta cheese and it turned out perfectly. It was really easy in the end and I have made it again since and gues what?... it worked again!!
Maybe I was a little to quick to give up on this one… lesson learnt.

done and dusted

So it turns out this goal is harder than it seems and the harder I try the less I actually enjoy eating cheesecake! So I think I might “give up” for the greater good, being that, I would rather continuing enjoying the finer points of cheesecake consumption than the finer points of cheesecake production. I am however an excellent brownie maker and have whipped up a batch just this morning… they are gooood!!

there were a pack of four mini cheesecakes on special at Bi-Lo and I bought them instead of baking one!!! I am so bad!! BUt they were soooo yummy!

I forgot about this goal but as I am currently between jobs it seems a good time to hone my cheesecake making skills. I will give this another shot in the next couple of days and let you know how it goes. This time I will follow the recipe exactly and not be half asleep when I do :)
Stay tuned for the result!!

I tried to bake a cheesecake tonight for the first time ever as I have people coming for a dessert night tomorrow… disaster! I bought light evaporated milk and it was way to runny… I think. So I tried to make it thicker. Maybe I was wrong about it being too runny cause now I have a cheesebrick! Aargh. Oh the dramas!

... can be found in “Craig Claiborne’s The New New York Times Cookbook.”

Hazelnut cheesecake.

Any authentic cheesecake recipe will require time and attention. Allow yourself a good portion of a day to make one.

You will be very happy you did.

But I have made several pretty tasty goodies in the past couple of weeks: a lo-cal chocolate polenta cake; a lemon-cranberry pie; and a new chocolate chip cookie. I’m testing out a few more receipes in the next couple of weeks; I’ll let you know how it goes.

...but perfect? Hmmmm, I’ll have to ask around for others’ opinions on that one.

Well, I took the cheesecake to the get-together. As I suspected, it was a humid day and I was worred about how the cheesecake would hold up. But thanks to retainer’s advice, my cheesecake stayed cool and held up very well!

And I’m told it tasted quite rich, too, so I’m almost content. (I’m on a diet, so no cheesecake for me!) I think there could be two other things to tweak. One, I’d like to get better at making a thinner and more even graham-cracker crust (mine tends to be a little thick in spots). Two, I’d like to get the top of my cheesecake an even golden hue. I think I might have to let that latter one go, because my oven isn’t the most reliable appliance.

And I’m thinking of experimenting a bit with a marscapone/cream cheese combination. Still, I’m very happy. This is going to be my signature dessert.

I love cheesecake, love it. It’s my favorite cake and has been ever since I was a small child, around 8 or 9. My mom asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, because in my family the birthday-child always got to choose the entire day’s menu. I think she was under the imprssion I would choose chocolate, like any red-blooded American girl child, but I chose cheesecake, and not the kind that came in a mix. She muttered the entire time she was making it, he he.

As an adult, I’ve been searching for the perfect cheesecake recipe. I’ve got rules, I do. It has to have pounds of cream cheese (and non of the low-fat stuff), be backed, with a homemade graham cracker crust, and take hours in the fridge/freezer to set up properly. None of the no-bake stuff.

And I think I’m pretty close to perfecting a New York-style cheesecake with a zillion calories per slice. The secret? Both lemon and orange zest. (Of course, now that I say that I begin to worry there’s a better recipe that I’ve overlooked.) Now all I have to do is get the bake and set times down, and I’ll be able to check this one off my list. I just need a good excuse to make the cake, because I certainly can’t have an entire cheesecake in my house!