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The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook
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The Ultimate Cheesecake Book (Canada, UK)
By Joey Reynolds & Myra Chanin
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: May 2001
ISBN: 031227128XWhat is this national obsession with producing a smooth-topped, uncracked cheesecake?
I do not understand it. Even at it’s best, a cheesecake is not a work of art. It is generally a rustic, solid, fairly plain dessert. Everyone knows how rich it will be, but the cheesecake communicates with flavor, not eye appeal. So, in my book at least, a crack in the top is not a disaster.
In The Ultimate Cheesecake Book, however, it is. Authors Joey Reynolds and Myra Chanin go to great lengths — unusual lengths — to ensure that the cheesecakes made with their recipes are served without a hint of a crack. Their rules include the following:
- Add eggs to the batter at very low speed to avoid whipping in air and mucking up the consistency.
- Let the cake rest after its initial baking to set before you apply a sour-cream glaze.
- Cover the cake with the glaze and bake it a bit longer to set the glaze.
- Never let the cheesecake cool at room temperature — whip it into the refrigerator the second it comes out of the oven.
The last rule is the most unexpected, since most people were taught not to add heavy pans of 300°+ foods to their refrigerators. (But our Ochef team conducted its own research on this unusual suggestion and found that it raised the temperature inside the refrigerator less than adding a new batch of groceries from the supermarket.) And it seems to work. None of the cheesecakes we made following these rules cracked.
In any event, the crack/no-crack issue is merely an unusual side-trip in a book of wonderful cheesecakes. Reynolds, a radio celebrity, and Chanin, a cookbook author and cheesecake entrepreneur, have provided recipes here to suit every taste with baked and non-baked cheesecakes, kosher and kosher pareve cheesecakes, “lower-calorie” cheesecakes, and cheesecake muffins.
There are some you’ll never make in a million years — Peanut Butter & Jelly Cheesecake, Cranberry Mint Cheesecake, etc. (it apparently takes more than three or four cheesecake recipes to make a publishable book) — but there are others you’ll want to make again and again.
The signature recipe, “Joey’s Best-Selling Bloomingdale’s Key Lime Cheesecake,” is a clear winner. We made it once as a test, and made it right away again to take to a party (even though the Peanut Butter & Jelly Cheesecake was beckoning). The one problem is that it calls for the juice of “one Key lime,” which are in season and available in most of this country for such a short time that most people are going to have to resort to bottled Key lime juice (as we did), and it is hard to guess how much juice one key lime has when you’re pouring juice from a bottle. (The first time, we used a couple of tablespoons, which was fine, if subtle; the second version we made more potent.) We also made the Triple Chocolate Cheesecake, with a crust of chocolate cookie crumbs, a chocolate batter, and a dusting of shaved chocolate. It will please anyone.
There are others we are eager to try — the Southern Peach Cheesecake, the White Cassis Cheesecake, the Ginger Pear Cheesecake, the Honey Fig Cheesecake, and the Four Chocolate Cheesecake (how did we miss that one the first time around?).
The crusts in the Reynolds/Chanin cheesecake world are exceptional and varied. Instead of sitting everything on crushed Graham crackers, they use delicious and sometimes unusual combinations of cookies, nuts, spices, butter and sugar. They make a huge difference to the finished cheesecake.
Baking and eating cheesecake is an infrequent occurrence at best these days. When it happens, it should be special, and — crack or no crack — the recipes in The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook will make sure it’s a treat.
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