The Facts and Fictions of Cheesecake

Have you heard the word on the streets? I made my very first cheesecake! And let me tell you, dear reader, it's nothing short of a miracle.

To start with, I have absolutely no idea what took me so long to make this thing. (Sheesh, do I always say this, or what? I feel like my life is simply a series of long-awaited culinary miracles.) It's a fact that cheesecake is one of those things that tends to always be delicious, but is also a fact that it's so, so much better when it's homemade. And, honestly, it's not all that difficult. The preparation steps are simple: bring ingredients to room temperature (this is key!), mix well, and pour into pan. The trickier part is in the actual cooking. You know, the forty days and forty nights that your little cheese-baby spends in the oven, preparing itself for its very brief existence in this wide, wide world?

I have decided that I will tell you the truth, which is that I spent the whole cheesecake cooking time maniacally searching online for cheesecake cooking tips. Not even tips, really, but truths. There is a great deal of information out there about cheesecake-baking, and I think that most of it is sheer and utter nonsense. Some of the ideas I've heard are ridiculous, like don't you dare eat the cheesecake until it's been in the refrigerator for twenty-four hours and cracks in a cheesecake mean that you're an idiot. Mainly, there's a lot of very fussy cheesecake tutorials out there and, before you waste your time, let me tell you this: avoid them! Avoid them at all costs! They will just make you really nervous and then you will open up the oven over and over, trying to decide if it's done yet, and jabbing at it and shaking it and trying to determine how jiggly is too jiggly. In the meantime, the cheesecake gets confused and may decide to give up on you altogether, in which case sadness will sweep through the kitchen, as you cry into the sad, runny cheesecake innards that you are eating with a spoon, pretending you don't care that cheesecake came to attack you and destroy all your dreams.

Okay, so this did not happen to me, but I pictured this scene -- me and my ruined cheesecake, trying to enjoy each other, then ultimately calling it quits and breaking up altogether in order to avoid further embarrassments. I did, however, open up the oven nine thousand times, trying to figure out if it was done yet. Finally, I think I just got lucky. It never cracked, and it started to look a little golden brown on the top. It jiggled around a little, but not too much. The aluminum foil appeared to be doing a terrible job as a barricade, and I think I might have just ended up taking it out of the oven just because the water issue was so nervewracking. How can it possibly make sense to bake a cake inside a pool of water? Who came up with that ridiculous idea, anyway?

This whole cheesecake thing started because, well, I've had cheesecake intentions for quite some time. M and I have always talked about cheesecake, even though we rarely eat it (ahem, until, ahem...recently) and long ago we had schemes of making cheesecake with our own bare hands. This dream went far enough that I actually got him some springform pans for a gift, although that was probably a good seven years ago, and they gathered a great deal of dust -- up until now, anyway.

Enough with the history lesson, though. Off you go, then! Get on it. And because I care about you and your cheesecake fate, I will warn you properly: this is dangerous, this cheesecake. It is going to taste good, and you will try to avoid it, but it will be impossible. It will call you to like a siren, and you will find yourself eating it at all times of day. In order to avoid this, I recommend freezing half of it (it this even realistic?) or giving some away (okay, that's even more unrealistic). Okay, so at least go into it knowing full and well that it, this little cheesecake, will have full control over your every move. That is, until you've eaten it all up. And then, of course, YOU are the winner.


The Simple, Perfect, Ultimate Cheesecake
adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

• 2 cups finely crushed graham crackers
• 1/4 cup ground or finely chopped almonds
  
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 3 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3 eggs, room temperature & lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 375F. For crust, in a medium bowl stir together crushed graham crackers, almonds, and the 1/3 cup sugar. Stir in melted butter. Press the crumb mixture onto bottom and about 2 inches up the sides of an 8- or 9-inch springform pan.

Place the crust-lined springform pan on a double layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bring edges of foil up and mold around sides of pan to form a watertight seal.

For filling, in a large mixing bowl beat cream cheese, the 1 cup sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed until combined. Beat in milk until smooth, scraping down sides constantly. Beat in eggs. Pour into crust-lined pan. Place in a roasting pan and pour enough hot water around pan to reach halfway up the sides. Make sure the sides of the cheesecake pan are higher than the sides of the roasting pan, and aim for at least an inch of space around all sides of the cheesecake pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes for the 8-inch pan (35 to 40 minutes for the 9-inch pan) or until edges of cake are set but center jiggles a bit when pan is gently shaken. (I ended up needing to bake mine for about an hour, I think, and I read somewhere that the toothpick-in-the-center trick for normal cakes also works with cheesecakes, so I used that method. The recipe also suggests turning off the oven and letting the cheesecake cool for about an hour inside the oven, but I was itchin' to get it out of the water bath, so I just took it out of the oven immediately. As it turns out, I was right to be nervous about that stinkin' water bath, because the water had somehow soaked into the aluminum foil, and therefore into the pan, and therefore into the crust of the cheesecake.)

Cool in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Using a small sharp knife, loosen the crust from sides of pan; cool for 30 minutes. Remove the sides of the pan; cool cheesecake completely on rack. (This the point where I discovered that the crust had gotten wet, although it didn't really seem too damaged, and it dried out a little as the cheesecake cooled.)

Cover and chill at least 4 hours before serving. Or, if you like warm cheesecake (seriously, is there any temperature of cheesecake that's bad?) then serve some to yourself straight away. It's okay, do it! I said so.