Mother's Day

I don’t know about you, but I love my mom.  She’s always been the rock, the one I can count on and the one who has put up with the vast majority of my “BS” over the years.  It seemed only fitting to celebrate this special day by baking something she would enjoy.  I called her up to ask what her favorite dessert is, and she was torn between chocolate mousse and cheesecake.  Since I already did a posting about my passion for chocolate mousse last fall, the cheesecake was the clear winner.

Now I love a good cheesecake, and it isn’t something I make very often.  I can’t say I remember the last time I made one.  Maybe it’s all the guilty feelings I have when I go to the store to purchase the mountain of cream cheese, sour cream and sometimes ricotta cheese necessary to create the decadent confection.  Once in a while, though, you just gotta let the beast out to run wild, run down that dairy isle and buy up all the blocks of Philadelphia Cream Cheese in site!  And that is exactly what I did.

The recipe I made was from my tried and true Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook.  I found a version of the recipe for the cheesecake online which is very similar to the book’s recipe, except for the crust.  I didn’t want the simple Oreo crust, but instead went for one comprised of the usual suspects:  sugar, butter, flour, egg yolk and vanilla, but this week even the vanilla got an upgrade and I found myself using vanilla paste instead of extract.  My friend Randy, who shares a similar passion for cooking and yummy treat making, gave me a jar of the precious, vanilla bean laden, syrupy goodness. 

I hadn’t used the paste since I was in pastry school and had forgotten how intense it can be.  It seems stronger than using the beans scraped directly from a vanilla bean pod.  Maybe the tiny flecks of vanilla “gold” undergo a transformative and intensifying process while sitting inside the pasty liquid…I can’t say for sure.  All that I know is it’s very, very good.

Since I was making the crust full of vanilla flavor I decided to substitute the extract in the cheesecake filling as well.  I wasn’t kidding when I said you would be buying a lot of blocks of cream cheese.  The original recipe calls for 7 (that’s right, 7) 8 oz blocks of full fat cream cheese along with a cup of sour cream.  This cheesecake in question is New York-Style Cheesecake, which seems only fitting since I’m a bit of a city boy these days.

The sad part of all this is my mother is many miles away in Missouri and wasn’t actually able to taste the cheesecake.  I’m sure I could slip some in a nice Tupperware dish and send it on its way, but somehow I don’t think it would look or taste the same as it did when it came out of the oven.  Cheesecake is a bit temperamental as it is.  I tried to give mine as much love and coaxing as possible for a beautiful, crack-free surface, but it was all for not.

My main issue could have been the pan size.  The recipe calls for a ten-inch spring form pan, and I only had an eight-inch.  I figured what the heck and just went with it.  You start by making your crust and baking it for about 15 minutes to get it going.  Once that cools, you mix up your filling and pour it on top of the crust.  Well, before I knew it I had filled the pan up to the very top and still had batter to spare.  I promptly put the remaining batter into some small ramekins and made little tiny cheesecake soufflés…delish!!!  Anyway, because of the fullness of the pan and a lack of surface area due to a smaller diameter pan, I had to let the cheesecake cook for longer than the recipe recommended just to get it baked all the way through.  I did do all the other steps properly, though, like wrapping the pan in foil and placing it in a larger roasting pan filled halfway up with water (a water bath if you will) for the cheesecake to get a facial while it was in the oven.  I even cracked open the oven door (with the oven off mind you) for an hour after the cheesecake had baked, but by then the damage must have been done and the cracks were there to stay.

Not being one to dwell on the negative, I have to say that the taste was really unbelievable.  Both sweet and savory without being too rich or overpowering, this cheesecake was a hit both with friends and co-workers alike.  We took some over to our friends Izabella and Jonathan’s and had several large slices while finishing the plans for their baby shower coming up in a couple of weeks. 

It seemed rather fitting to be eating a cheesecake inspired by my mother with my dear friend who is a mother-to-be very, very soon.  I’m sure my mom would have enjoyed the cheesecake and had a cup of coffee right along side of us while we gossiped and planned the quickly approaching day of celebration.


I do wish I lived closer to my mother (actually, I wish she lived closer to me), but you do the best you can when you are multiple states and miles apart.  There are many ways to communicate in our great age of technology.  The phone and email are always a good way of keeping in touch, but sometimes you need write a blog entry to say I love you.  It’s just who I am.

Iris blooming in the early May garden.