Cherry Cheese Cake Callenge

Last weekend, I decided to try my hand at making a cheese cake for the first time.

It was Matt’s birthday recently and his mother always makes a cheese cake for special occasions; especially birthdays. But because we’re in Newfoundland and Labrador and his parents are in Ontario, it’s unlikely a cheese cake would have made it in once piece by Canada Post. I emailed my mom-in-law and told her about my plan: I wanted to make Matt a cherry cheese cake and needed her recipe.

Once I knew the required ingredients and instructions, I was off to the races. Since we were having my parents, grandparents and friends of the family over for dinner last Saturday and then friends over for cake that evening, Friday night was when this cheese cake debut had to happen. According to Matt, “It has to be made the day before because it NEEDS to sit in the fridge overnight.” Fair enough. No big deal.

Now you should know that when I bake, it’s a bit of a process. By and large in our house, Matt loves to cook and I love to bake. And I’m good at it… but I’m not a very fast baker. I find baking relaxing, but also a great outlet for my OCD (which is pretty mild, but loves to come out and play when I bake). I’m crazy about measuring, rereading instructions a hundred times over and enjoy that there’s often a specific order required. That’s not to say I won’t modify recipes (i.e. I add vanilla to ALL THE THINGS where possible).

I knew going into this that once the cheese cake was baked, it had to cool off and my mom-in-law does the very gradual cooling off technique: turn off the oven, crack the door and open it a little more and more over a few hours. What I didn’t realize is that cheese cake takes a hell of a long time to cool down!!!! Apparently it’s part thermal or something.

After baking the graham cookie bottom and then adding the cheese cake mixture and baking it as instructed, I started to cool it off. And I waited… and waited.. and waited. I had enough time to watch one of the Teletoon channels and eventually I realize that I had seen the same Family Guy episode on that channel earlier in the evening.

I talked to the cherry cake. Told it to cool it’s heels. To stop being so warm. I threatened to put it outside and into a snow bank (this was an empty threat, but worth a try at least). I put the pan on our granite trivet to try and motivate it down a few degrees. But that sucker wanted to stay warm. Around 1 a.m. I told it where to go and how I felt about it’s mother. Enough was enough: time to add the cherry pie filling.

Cherry cheese cake pre-fridge and with terrible flash-induced lighting

While falling asleep, I smiled to myself and thought about how I’m a serial late night baker and I have yet to break this habit.

It was both a blessing and a curse that there was a 24 hours Sobeys near our apartment in Toronto. Poor Matt went on more than one late night trek to get me some additional flour, sugar or other desperately needed baking ingredient. It was always appreciated of course! How many times before going to visit his family in Barrie, would I start baking on a Friday night (because we were taking the bus or renting a car early the next morning) and think it was a good idea to start making multiple types of cookies or some other dessert.

Despite the sleep loss, the cherry cheese cake was a success! I ended up using a larger pan than was suggested, and there are a couple of things I’ll change next time, but it was well received by our dinner guests and then our friends finished it off in short order.

Ta-da!

I forgot to mention that we almost had a distaster in the home stretch of this dessert adventure. When trying to remove the darn thing from the spring form pan, the pan didn’t “spring” open right away. Thankfully my father is a Newfoundland MacGyver and was able to carefully work some mojo to make it pop open. The pan received a scolding and I think it’s learned its lesson.

After dinner and already half gone. Nom nom nom!

I don’t mean to brag, but I honestly thought cheese cake was a lot harder. What’s the big deal? It’s not the cheapest dessert to make and it does take extra time, but it’s pretty much a hurry up and wait situation.

What type of cheese cake should I make next? I’m planning to let mom-in-law know about this success and will be asking about her pumpkin cheese cake. It’s probably my favourite and I’ll definitely want to give that one a try!