The Cheesecake: Roman cheesecake — small, unsweetened ricotta-based loaves soaked in honey.

Roman Cheesecake

With the remaining ricotta from our last cheesecake, we decided to make ancient Roman cheesecake loaves dipped in honey, using this recipe from Delicious Italy. How can you go wrong with cheese and honey? Wikipedia says: ” Roman-style cheesecake uses honey and a ricotta-like cheese along with flour and is traditionally shaped into loaves. Some recipes call for bay leaves, which may have been used as a preservative. It is still baked in areas in Italy that kept culinary traditions alive after the fall of Rome.”

These were super simple to make (once I figured out I should use the DOUGH hook on my mixer…) using just flour, ricotta, and an egg to make the loaves. They smelled delightfully savory while they baked.
The Recipe:

• 7/8 cup flour
• 8 oz ricotta
• 1 egg
• fresh bay leaves (we had to use dry ones, so we’ll have to try again with fresh some day)
• 1/3 cup honey

Sift the flour in a bowl.

Beat the cheese until it is soft and stir it into the flour along with the egg.

Form a soft dough and divide into four.

Form each into a bun and place them on a greased baking tray with a fresh bay leaf underneath.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Bake for 30 minutes or until they are golden brown.

Warm the honey and place the warm cakes into it so that they absorb the liquid fully.

Allow the cheesecakes to stand for 30 minutes before serving.

The cheesecakes turned out pretty yummy (except we overbaked them). The cheesecake loaves were mild and had the texture somewhere between cake and bread. We found that the honey overpowered the flavor of the ricotta. I will definitely make these again, but I will add more or stronger cheese and cook for a shorter amount of time. We enjoyed these on a lazy Saturday night watching bad dance movies on TV with a bottle of Brouilly.

November 16th, 2008 | Tags: honey, Italian, ricotta, Roman | Category: Recipes | Leave a comment

The cheesecake: a light, orange-flavored Italian ricotta cheesecake topped with caramelized orange rind.

Italian Orange-Ricotta Cheesecake

In honor of meeting our friend Jason’s new puppy, Bizmark — (see adorable pic in the gallery below! And don’t worry, the cheesecake was for the people, not the dog) — we tried to bake an Italian Orange-Ricotta cheesecake based on this recipe from International Flavors. Per Wikipedia’s definition, this recipe isn’t a typical Italian cheesecake, but it seemed like a good foray into the Italian world of ricotta-based cheesecake. (American cheesecakes typically use cream cheese.)

It certainly didn’t end up as pretty as it was supposed to. In fact, it looked like a total disaster… but it tasted pretty good. Jason’s puppy was definitely interested in it, and the humans around her liked it, though some found the caramelized orange rinds too pungent. If I were to make this recipe again, I would make sure to grease the pan really well, remove the cake before it cracks, and cut the orange rinds super thin. Here’s the recipe as I made it, which is probably a little off from the original recipe in measurement conversions.

The Recipe:

The crust:

• 1 1/3 cup of crumbled graham cookies
• 4 tbs butter

The filling:

• 16 oz ricotta cheese
• 7 tbs heavy cream
• 3 eggs
• 1 orange
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tbs flour

The topping:

• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 oranges, rinds only
• 1 cup water

First, grease and flour the springform pan (yes, we finally got one!). Preheat the oven to 320 degrees.

Prepare the crust. Crumble the graham crackers in a food processor and melt the butter. Mix together lightly with a fork and pat into the base of the pan.

Next, prepare the filling. Grate the peel of one orange and squeeze the juice. Add the ricotta, the sugar, the cream, the flour and the egg yolks. Mix at medium speed with a mixer (yes, we finally got one of these too!). Whip the egg whites and add to the ricotta cream. Pour into the pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.

For the topping, julienne (um, slice) the orange rinds into very thin strips. Cook the rinds with the sugar and water over low heat for 30 minutes. Drain the rinds as needed to top your cheesecake.

Our finished cheesecake looked, well, like a mess, but like a homemade fancy cake. It was light and not too sweet, with delicate orange flavoring. We ate it at Jason’s house, where we played with Bizmark and competed in a game of Citadels. That is as geeky as it sounds.

November 15th, 2008 | Tags: Italian, orange, ricotta | Category: Recipes | Leave a comment

In preparation for the big day tomorrow, we thought we should make everyone aware of the Cheesecake related holiday.  Yes, cheesecake is THAT big of a deal…

Day of the Cheesecake (in Sweden), November 14th

and of course, National Cheesecake Day on July 30th.

You no longer have any excuse to be unprepared. Get baking!

November 13th, 2008 | Category: Misc | Leave a comment

In researching Vancouver cheesecakes for our Vancouver Vanilla post, I ran across this place, which seems to be the place to go for cheesecake in Vancouver:

Cheesecake, Etc.

Their cheesecakes look and sound delicious — If you’ve been there, let us know how it is!

November 8th, 2008 | Tags: Vancouver | Category: Restaurants | Leave a comment

It has occurred to me that I can’t possibly eat as much cheesecake as I investigate, so I am starting a new category of postings of cheesecake restaurants to keep on the radar for the quintessential cheesecake of the region. Not places that just serve cheesecake, but that specialize in it.

So, of course, in New York (or Brooklyn, our new hood!) — the quintessential:

Junior’s Cheesecake

We had Junior’s before we started this cheesecake obsession. It’s dense, tasty New York cheesecake. I’m ready to go back to try the Devil’s Food Cheesecake: “Our Original New York cheesecake is combined with our famous Devil’s Food Cake.  Recently featured on the Food Network’s “Throwdown with Bobby Flay.” Layers of rich chocolate cake and fudge frosting adorned with devilishly large chocolate chips and shavings.” Sounds indugently awesome.

November 8th, 2008 | Tags: American, junior's, new york | Category: Restaurants | Leave a comment

The Cheesecake: a crustless, Vancouver style cheesecake, which we served with a blueberry rum sauce and fresh blueberries. The filling is yummy — sweet, very creamy, and light with a noticeable vanilla flavoring.

Vancouver Cheesecake

OK. We made a few errors with our first solo cheesecake, but did succeed in making something quite tasty. Our goal was to make this Vancouver style cheesecake. According to Wikipedia’s cheesecake entry: “Vancouver-style cheesecake is a light, airy style made without a crust, primarily in vanilla and chocolate and often served refrigerated with various local fruit toppings such as British Columbia strawberries, raspberries and cherries.”

So, recipe in hand (or rather, iPhone), we hit up the farmer’s market and the supermarket, when the obvious flaw occurred to us — We don’t own a pie dish. [oops.]

Making the cake itself was not difficult…but due to some knife balancing stupidity in our tiny Manhattan kitchen, I managed to slice my thumb. [dumb.] I also managed to explode some whipping cream in the kitchen, but we don’t need to discuss that.

I think there is a nice life lesson to learn here somehow. Something about persevering, or making do with what you have, or getting dirty. Or maybe it’s just about eating more cheesecake.

The Recipe:

• 16 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• 6 large eggs
• 2/3 cup whipping cream
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat together cream cheese and ricotta until smooth. We did this by hand, because we don’t own a mixer. [surprise.]

Beat in eggs, whipping cream, and lemon.

Fold in vanilla.

Pour into a baking pan and bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven – the cheesecake should be a bit jelly-like in the center. Let cool, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Slice and serve, with the topping of your choice.

We made a blueberry rum topping and ate this on a Sunday night, while watching the X-files. It wasn’t necessarily the smoothest adventure, but it was certainly an adventure — and it tasted good.

August 14th, 2008 | Tags: blueberries, Canadian, cream cheese, crustless, ricotta, Vancouver, vanilla | Category: Recipes | Comments (1)

The Cheesecake: a light, American style cheesecake made with cream cheese and Greek yogurt. This is a simple, quick, and adaptable recipe that yields a firm, light, smooth filling with a sweet and slightly savory flavor. The crust is a traditional crumb crust, of medium thickness. DELICIOUS.

The Cheesecake

When we asked Constantin’s mother to help us in our cheesecake adventure, she graciously offered this simple recipe to kick off our blog. As the story goes, Mrs. Koumouzelis discovered this recipe in 1980 in New Jersey when a friend served a slice to her at lunch. It reminded her of a cheesecake she used to eat at the Bay — so she decided to adopt the recipe and adjust it to even more closely resemble the cheesecake she was so fond of. Years later, when we came up with the odd ambition to start this blog, she helped us bake our very first cheesecake.

The Recipe:

• 12 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 pint strained Greek yogurt (full fat, no gelatin or additives) OR sour cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• some crushed pineapple OR other flavoring to your liking (e.g. vanilla, lemon, amaretto, etc.)
• 3 tbs butter
• ~9 digestive biscuits OR other cookie

First, prepare the crust.

Melt the butter in a pie dish in the microwave. Crush the cookies in a processor and add the crumbs to the melted butter. The crumbs should hold together with the butter, without being overly wet. Shape the crust by patting the crumbs with a fork, filling in any holes and forming the sides.

Next, prepare the filling.

Crush the pineapple. We crushed some in the food processor and some by hand, to get a bit of texture. With a mixer or by hand, combine the cream cheese, yogurt, sugar, egg, and pineapple until well blended.

Pour the filling into the crust, smoothing with a spatula.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. You may need to adjust based on your oven, but the goal is for a slightly golden cheesecake, without cracks.

Let cool, then refrigerate. Slice and serve, with the topping of your choice.

We ate this cheesecake on a warm summer night after an indulgent meal of octopus, mussels, tomato-cucumber salad, and more — while sitting on Mrs. Koumouzelis’ patio with a view of the Greek sea. She served the cheesecake with a topping of her homemade Vyssino, a Greek sour cherry spoon sweet.

Not a bad start to our adventures in cheesecake.

July 30th, 2008 | Tags: American, cream cheese, Greek, Vysinno, yogurt | Category: Recipes | Leave a comment