Cheesecakes

I am generally a serviceable cook, in that I can follow a recipe and have whatever I’m making (mostly) turn out.  There are exceptions to this rule, however, one being pie (damn you, pie crust!), and the other being cheesecakes.  I would say 3 out of 5 cheesecakes I make turn out perfectly, and the other 2 end up edible but nothing you’d serve to someone proudly.

(Which reminds me:  years ago in my twenties I made a cheesecake for a book group I was in, and it turned out an absolute disaster.  However, since I was in my twenties, it didn’t really occur to me NOT to bring it, and to, say, pick something up at a bakery on my way there.  Instead I brought the brick of a gloppy cheesecake to the meeting and served it miserably.  I think I was hoping that it wasn’t as bad as it so obviously was.  It’s something that now appears in my head from time to time:  why did I bring that cheesecake?)

 

A couple of months ago I kept reading about the Basque cheesecake that you cook at a high temperature for a short amount of time and it gets all blackened on the outside.  This appealed to me so much that I even got a special little six-inch pan to make it in.  I used a recipe from the blog, The Little Epicurean.  This one is more of a basque-esque cheesecake, since she very wisely added a crust made from ‘nilla wafers.  (I mean, is not the crust the best part?  I think if I got served a crust-less cheesecake I’d cry a little.)  Anyway, this was one of my 3 out of 5’s:  it was a beautiful little thing with an almost feathery texture.  I recommend.

 

I’ve been eyeing a recipe for a mocha cheesecake in my New York Times cookbook, and will make it someday, even though I don’t really like chocolate in my cheesecake or cheesecake in my chocolate.  Amanda Hesser’s description of this cake however – how she thought it was too rich, but her husband got angry when she threw out the last piece, so she included it in the book as a peace offering – means that I will have to try it at some point. 

 

Instead I saw a recipe saved on my Instagram site from the website Kitchn for a sweet potato cheesecake.  It was a modestly sized cheesecake – it only called for 3 boxes of cheese, as compared to the 5 required for the mocha cheesecake – so I gave it a whirl.  My cheesecake fairy godmother had gone on break, though, for this cake was not at all magical.  First there was a grand canyon of a crack running across the top, despite all the different things they have you do to prevent this happening.  And the cheesecake itself was fine, except that here and there were little nodules of cream cheese and occasionally even of sweet potato.  My guess is I did not let the cheese soften enough before mixing.  The crust was great, but I will not be saving this recipe.

 

My college friend and I were texting not too long ago about baking, and she mentioned some cheesecake I used to make that, apparently, was very good, yet I have zero memory of repeatedly making a good cheesecake around the time we lived together in Boston!  It’s a mystery.  I think there was a ricotta cheesecake in one of the Moosewood cookbooks that I made from time to time, so surely this must be it?  But she thinks it was not ricotta.  It’s a cheesecake mystery.

The Basque Cheesecake:

it's supposed to look like this!