I had a bit of an adventure in baking last week. Early last week, in a round about way, I found a recipe to what was purportedly “THE cheesecake”. Really. It was claiming to be Capital T-H-E cheesecake. At first, I was speculative… until I read the lead-in blog post that went along with it. In short, the author/chef was not satisfied with any of the recipes for nor any of the restaurants cheesecakes she had experienced; all of them fell short, usually in texture and consistency, to one that she had and oft requested for birthdays made by a family friend. She set herself a mission to find, modify or create one herself, a recipe that would rival the cheesecake she experienced in her childhood and share it with the world. Here’s a link to that post, BTW.

In reading her story and recipe that followed, I was intrigued. Baking a crust-less cheesecake in a water-bath? I must try this. I let the idea rest overnight last Monday, so by Tuesday afternoon, I was pretty psyched. The following weekend was Easter and my extended family was getting together for a picnic at a park. I thought it might be a good idea to give this a try for that, but since it was a new recipe, I figured I should take a test-run first. Bring it to work! Perfect!

After work on Tuesday, I picked up the needed ingredients, including a recommended substitution, and set about making the cheesecake to take to work the next morning. Some problems started immediately. Firstly, I only had a 3-Cup food processor and I quickly realized that all of the ingredients would not fit into it at once; I had a hard enough time fitting three bricks of cream cheese into it, much less the fourth brick, four eggs, third-of-a-cup of yogurt, etc. I decided that the recipe would nicely split into four and set about doing that. One note of advice: as good an idea as it might seem at the time, do not stick your rubber spatula into the food processor to “get it pushed down and mixing again” while the machine is running. Invariably, you’ll hit an air pocket and the spatula will quickly fall down to the level of the blades, neatly slicing off the top of the spatula. More on that later.

I folded the fourthed portions of batter together in a mixing bowl and poured it into my prepared, boat-ized springform pan and placed the pan in the water bath. Here are the twitter status updates from that evening: “hour into my first cheesecake; pictures to follow” and “Success so far. Cheesecake has reached ‘rubbery when wiggled’ consistency w/out cracks. Final step in cheesecake production: brown the top.” The total baking time was two and a half hours and varying temperatures. At around an hour and a third into the process, the procedure called for me to run a knife around the edge to help avoid cracks forming in the top… I must’ve gone too deep, because: “Damn. Recipe called to ‘bake it in water’ and it looks like my ‘boat’ sprung a leak. I have little hope. Cheese-puddle anyone?”. Yeah, it came out of the oven a little damp.

The next morning I decided to take it work anyway, figuring “…engineers love being guinea pigs when free food is involved”. The taste was good, but the texture needed some work. It wasn’t bad. It was very close, in fact, but it was a little ‘clumpier’, just a little too crumbly, not enough smoothly-melty for my liking. As far as the spatula-advice, I can say from explicit experience, julienned spatula does not go well served in a cheesecake.

All in all, my attempt at cheesecake was declared, “good, but practice was needed” by my colleagues. I quietly cursed my undersized food processor. On my way home from work on Friday, I picked up a shiny, new 11-Cup food processor and more cream cheese; this would allow me to achieve the results I so badly desired. What I really wanted was make something my grandma would like. My aunt and her were making the trek up from SoCal for a long weekend with the family and I wanted to make something she’d enjoy. Really the cheesecake “…could be a polished turd on a silver platter and my grandma would still love it; I want[ed] to impress her.”. The new food processor worked like a dream. All the ingredients came together very smoothly, I was careful to not perforate the foil-boat and the top browned quite beautifully; the entire house smelled of cheesecake deliciousness. As I was removing the cheesecake from the oven after its 2.5 hour bake I ran into a problem I’m told that every baker goes through at least once. To quote twitter from that evening: “I doubt my grandma would be impressed with “cheesecake dropped face-down on floor”. In other news: Hot things are hot.” Apparently, as I was taking the cheesecake out of the water bath, my pot-holder got wet. While dry pot-holders do a decent job at protecting from heat, wet ones do a very good job at transmitting heat. Here I was at 11:30pm removing cheesecake goo from the floor, with no desert to bring to my family-gathering. Granted, they weren’t expecting me to bring it, but I was still disappointed.

The next morning, I got up early, went to the store and picked up yet another round of ingredients for Cheesecake MK-III. I had time because Chel and I weren’t expected until the early afternoon and I really wanted to know if the new food processor was going to give me the difference in results. It finished cooling just enough, just in time for me to put it into refrigerator before we had to leave Much to my dear-sweet wife’s chagrin, we would be going back over to my parent’s house again the next day, partially to share the cheesecake and partially to spend time with my somewhat-ailing grandmother.

Saturday was a good day. My sister, brother-in-law and their brood of six joined my folks, a couple of my aunts, a few cousins and my grandma for an afternoon in the park of playtime, kite-flying, food and company. The pasta salad I had made while waiting on the cheesecake, while tasty, was far too much in quantity. Two pounds of pasta is more than enough when only 4 or 5 people present enjoy it. But like I said, it was a good day.

Sunday, we were up early and back at my parent’s house for brunch, cheesecake in tow. I got several “that looks tasty” remarks from my aunts and mom, but the best compliment in the form of, “my…that’s bea-utiful!” came from my grandma. Like I said, it could be a literal mud pie and my grandma would be pleased. After brunch settled, we sliced into it, passed it around and, for once, there was complete silence at an extended-family gathering… followed by a cacophony of compliments. I was ignoring all of that and watching for my grandma’s reaction; the crinkled-eye, full grin on her face made the problems I’d had minimal. It was worth the all the trouble.

Being the perfectionist I am, I wasn’t quite pleased with the texture. It was still a bit on the crumbly side of things, but at least it wasn’t the full-of-air/”baked mousse” consistency I was really trying to avoid. You can’t have everything.

When I shared with my grandma the adventure I’d had in baking it, she very plainly said that she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making the third one. My telling her that it was worth seeing her reaction was met with an “oh you silly boy” look; amazing how some people can make you feel 6 years old again. Growing up, she was the kind of grandmother who, when she knew we were coming for a visit, would go to the trouble of making a variety of “favorite desserts” for her grandchildren. I wanted to return the favor, in some small form, and do her proud.

It was a good weekend and a great end to an adventure… from that aspect.