Desserts First, The Cheesecake Obsession

When I say that my mother was obsessively clean I am speaking about the OCD type compulsion where it was a sin to walk on the carpets of the house. “I just vacuumed and your putting FOOTPRINTS ON THE VACUUM LINES!” compulsive.

As you can imagine, a woman who slaved to maintain carpet crop circles did not appreciate crumbs on the counter.  She incessantly screamed about not wanting anything on the countertops, items such as bowls, knives or measuring cups.  I rebelled by persistently trying to bake.  Beginning around the tender age of ten I craved to measure and mix. At my neighbor’s house I was drawn to the sounds of the kitchen by clinking pans and the whir of the classic hand mixer. I was enchanted by the notion that you could cream together butter, sugar and eggs until the house was filled with the scent of cookies or cake. My mother was distraught by my never ending request to create confectionaries. I was prohibited from this calorie infused, mess inducing activity unless there was a family birthday looming.

By the time I discovered the power of the recipe our kitchen dichotomy was cemented in place. Since I loved to read, those instructions were the magic wand I discovered so distinctly in the seventh grade. What happened in the seventh grade?  A local cheesecake shop shut their doors.  Maybe more accurately they decided to take their boatful of cheesecake scented cash and head to the Bahamas for much deserved R&R but never-the-less….the heavily guarded recipe made its way from a woman who previously worked at the shop to our neighbor.  This neighbor was my friend mom who loved to bake.  She promptly made the cheesecake and all of the adults I knew ate it slowly, moaning and rolling their eyes back with every bite. Someone would mutter, ‘it’s so rich” and then someone else would counter “yes but so light.”

This recipe was given to my mother, who wasn’t going to take the time let alone wreak havoc on the counter with containers required to make said cheesecake.  Therefore, the next birthday was my opportunity to recreate the recipe.  I followed the recipe as if it were instructions to undetonate a bomb, which means I followed it down to the letter.  The result was a dessert so smooth and delicious that everyone who ate it argued there was no way I had made it…. it was too good.  For decades, this was my go to recipe when I was required to bring a dish to a party or work event.  When I needed to impress my soon to be in-laws, I confidently placed this cheesecake on the Thanksgiving table and awaited the accolades.

I freely admit I am obsessed with the little high that comes from providing so much pleasure in a forkful of food.  That swell of pride is where my lifelong addiction with baking began.  As with any true compulsion the more I was prohibited from doing it the more desirable it became, so as an adult I bake ferociously as I am free to do so.  Additionally, I spill silky flour and drop bits of sugar recklessly onto my counters as I do it.
I have never calmed the urge to bake so I tend to do it often.  I bake to relax, to share and to enjoy. Eventually as I began cooking as an adult the baking obsession morphed into a full blown cooking habit.

When I decided to write about incorporating liquors into food, liquor laced desserts were easy to come by.  People have been infusing liquor with desserts for hundreds of years.  The realm of baking with liquor and spirits is so established that you can open any of your existing cookbooks and find rum, Grand Marnier and amaretto lurking in existing recipes. While getting organized I found I had to specifically stop writing down fantastic ideas for liquored up desserts because I was beginning to amass an encyclopedia.  I continue to bring my focus to provide a well rounded guide to adding spirits to all areas of the menu, from appetizer through dessert.  However, since baking was my first love in the kitchen and the above mentioned cheesecake was my first success, I feel compelled to begin my website with the dessert that started it all for me.

New York Style Cheesecake

1 lb ricotta cheese                                      ½ tsp lemon juice
2 pkg (8oz ea) cream cheese                   ½ tsp vanilla
1 ½ cup white granulated sugar             3 tblsp corn starch
4 whole large eggs                                     3 tblsp flour
1 pint sour cream                                       ¼ cup melted butter

10” Spring form pan – buttered

This recipe is far from having any difficulties; it just requires time and patience.  If you can manage those two things you will be heavily rewarded.Do NOT preheat the oven.All ingredients should be at room temperature with the exception of the sour cream, leave that in the fridge until folding into the cake.

With a hand mixer, blend the ricotta cheese and cream cheese well.  Blend in sugar.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, until each is fully incorporated.  Add vanilla, lemon juice, cornstarch, flour and butter.  Mix well, and when I say mix well this mixture should be so blended it could be poured in a glass to drink.  It takes a bit of patience and probably a full 7 -10 minutes of beating with a mixer.  Fold in sour cream until there is no distinct white trail of the sour cream.

I have a love/hate relationship with the spring form pan.  Love it because you just lift it off your cake.  Viola!  Hate it because it wants to leak unless it is put together properly and even then it still wants to seep out liquid into the oven.  I always put it together, take it apart, put it back together and repeat until I am positive it is on correctly and then I place it on a large piece of aluminum foil and crunch the foil around the underneath just in case a bit of liquid seeps out.

Pour the perfectly blended batter into a 10” buttered spring form pan.  Just like the Chinese restaurants warn. No substitutions!  Do not substitute Pam or other spray, the pan needs to be buttered, no way around that fact.  Also, butter each piece of the pan individually.
Place in cold oven.  Turn heat to 325 degrees.  Bake for one hour.  Timer.  One hour.  Exactly.  DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR!!!!  ALL CAPS!  YES, I AM YELLING AT YOU!  DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!  Your cheesecake wants to crack, desperately.  Do not open the oven door while cooking under any circumstances. No peeking while it’s cooling, remember that curiosity killed the cat and cracks cheesecakes.  Leave it alone.   Turn off the heat but leave the cheesecake in the oven until all the heat has dissipated, probably a MINIMUM (yes more shouting) of two hours.  Chill cake for another 4 hours before serving.

Now you may be wondering, where is the crust?  This cheesecake is crustless by design and lacks nothing because of it.  I have, at the request of my hubby, made the same recipe with the traditional graham cracker crust.  If you decide at some point to try it with a crust make sure it is thin along the bottom and up the sides.  This batter fills the pan.  If you have the benefit of a see through oven door you will see this cake rises and then kind of settles back down.  A really thick crust will cause spillage.  Cooking and baking brings enormous amounts of pleasure.  Cleaning cheesecake batter off the bottom of your oven does not.

Now for decades I served this cheesecake with the very traditional strawberry topping.  Over the years I have experimented with dozens of cheesecake recipes and found a recipe for a blackberry sauce that I think is to die for.  So now I offer both strawberries for the traditionalists and this for me.  The original recipe was out of a Nick Stelino cookbook and was paired with an orange flower walnut encrusted cheesecake. I have altered the blackberry sauce a bit and infused it with blackberry brandy.

Blackberry Brandy Sauce

10 oz frozen blackberries
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons blackberry brandy
1 tablespoon sugar if needed

Place all the ingredients minus the sugar in a small saucepan and simmer until the frozen berries are thawed and broken up.  Put the mixture into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.  Be careful because the heat of the liquid can cause the top of the blender to pop off spraying blackberry sauce all over the kitchen.  Please keep a hand on the blender while whirring.  Taste. The liquor adds sweetness but the sauce shouldn’t be unusually sweet. Sometime different berries are more tart than others so if you need the sugar add it now and pulse into the mixture.  Pour through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. Press all the liquid out with a spatula. This step is necessary otherwise the seeds will ruin the texture of the final product.  Discard the seeds and refrigerate until needed.  Spoon over individual slices of cheesecake.

This sauce is also phenomenal over good vanilla ice cream.

Eat, Drink and Be Merry,
Lisa