Novel Eats

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As you may know, I’ve made vegan cheesecake a few times. Every time I’ve made cheesecake, however, I have never made my own crust. This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge has given me the motivation and opportunity to make my own crust, which I think turned out great.

A few years ago I worked as a receptionist at a fine stringed instruments dealer. It was a very interesting cultural experience, because we sold extremely expensive violins, violas and cellos to people with a good deal of money. It was, and has been so far, my only true exposure to this slice of the music industry. It was also a very interesting and enjoyable foray into fine chocolates, desserts and other culinary delights. This was prior to my swearing off of cheese, milk and other dairy items, so I’ll confess that I had quite a few non-vegan experiences (and one non-vegetarian one, which I didn’t realize until later – um yeah, imitation crab is still real fish, FYI).

One year ago we embarked on the vegan cheesecake quest. It was my husband’s birthday and I made him a cheesecake from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. We didn’t love that first cheesecake, but the texture was there, as well as the creaminess. It seemed that we had a mission. My husband had that gleam in his [...]

When my husband and I were vegetarians his favorite dessert was cheesecake. I actually did not like it that much, so when we became vegan it was no big loss to me. Several months ago, however, it was his birthday and I thought I’d try to make a vegan version. I am a big one for following recipes pretty closely, so in the end we did not like it that much, but it set my husband on a crusade to perfect the recipe. We have since discovered, through the trial and error of multiple cheesecakes, that it is best made with chocolate. Chocolate does solve a lot of things in my mind, and it has surpassed the task with this recipe, which my husband made.