Awesome Cheesecake Recipe, and Why You Couldn’t Afford Mine

An awesome cheesecake recipe. Plus stuff.

You’ve surely seen me humbly mention my cheesecakes, (almost) the first thing on my front page. If I remember right, the words best and ever witnessed by mankind were uttered, in that order.

However, I admit I have been curiously silent about them, barely even mentioning them in any context whatsoever. For that, I am sorry. This will change now. Both me being silent about them, and me being sorry about being silent. Cause, you know, I won’t be having been silent after this.

Nevermind.

To the point. I freaking love cheesecakes. And by cheesecake, I mainly mean the proper kind – that’s never been near an oven during its cakey life. The baked kind are okay. Quite tasty in fact. But the cold kind, the ones that are solidified in a fridge – those are downright blissful. Denser than a black hole in calories, yes. But it matters not.

They are so awesome.

If you don’t believe me, just behold the magnificence below!

That, my friends, is the kinuski-lingonberry cheesecake that I made for my wife’s birthday roughly a week ago. Looks delicious – tasted even better. Had to really restrict myself in order not to finish my entire half-cake in one sitting.

In case you want to try it out yourself, here’s the recipe:

1. Crush 120 grams or so of oatmeal cookies. Soak in 50-80 grams of melted butter and mix even. Pat on the bottom of a baking tin (the kind with disposable sides).
2. Whip up 3 deciliters of vanilla sauce. The consistency should be somewhat looser than whipped cream. You can go harder if you’re able to, but I doubt that. Indeed, for the sake of all that’s good in our world – use an electric mixer. Whipping vanilla sauce by hand is absolute murder and takes roughly forever.
3. Add in a couple of caps of any artificial sweetener of your choice. The kind that goes in coffee or tea, you know. The small crumbs.
4. Evenly mix in 300 g or so of cream cheese (Philadelphia is the classic).
5. Also mix in 6 pre-soaked gelatin leaves. (You may have to adjust the number based on the kind of the stuff you’ve got).
6. Finally, gently add 2 deciliters of frozen lingonberries. Beware – gently and frozen are the keywords here. Failure to pay attention will result in a pink cake. Not that it wouldn’t be kind of cool in its own sense.
7. Pour the mixture into the same baking tin.
8. Now the hardest part: let it sit in a fridge for at least 4-6 hours – preferably 12.

Eat with kinuski sauce. Enjoy pure happiness.

(In case you’re wondering, kinuski is a Scando-Russian sweet sauce, very much like loose toffee. Quite easy to make yourself, or so I hear.)

Cheesecakes and Capitalism

I’m a moderately experienced cheesecake-maker, and the above procedure takes me maybe half an hour. Say an hour if you count loading the million cups and tins to the dishwasher. Even more if you count the shopping, and the delayed bus connections.  The taste is still definitely worth it – infinitely more so.

But, as you realize, this is my half-professional website, and you remember I mention cheesecakes on my very front page. However, you can also see I haven’t so far listed any cheesecake deliveries on my consulting portfolio.

None. Nada.

Not that I haven’t been asked to do that. But, if you added up the costs of the ingredients (not so much) and the cost of my time (very, very much), my cheesecakes wouldn’t be cheapcakes. Quite the contrary. I simply don’t have the production volumes of a bakery chain, or even that of a small corner cafe, to amortize my costs. They would remain ultra-high.

That’s not the main reason, though. Artisan delicacies do sell, for quite ridiculous prices more often than not. No, the absense from Antti-cakes from the open market is due to reasons deeper than plain money.

My cheesecakes are made with feeling. Most often, the feeling of impatience, frustration (my electric mixer has five power settings that go from “Full Blast” to “Downright Apocalyptic”, plus it has an extra Turbo button that I have never had the courage to try – anyways vanilla sauce is difficult to remove from the ceiling), and hunger – but a feeling nevertheless.

Selling my cakes for money alone would take that away.

Hence, if you have had the fortune of tasting in the past, or consider yourself worthy enough to do so in the near future – consider yourself amongst the chosen elite.

Moar Food

Okay, enough with the culinary fancy-ness.

Time for some basic gym-bro (I’m a proud self-proclaimed one, mind you) chow. Easy to make with practically no effort at all. Perfect for a diet.

Here’s a recipe, if you can even call it that.

1. Cook some past. Whole-grain fusilli for me.
2. Chop up some left-over chicken breast.
3. Mix ’em up. Garnish with ketchup.

Looks like what’s pictured above. Tastes good.

All in all, it comes at 43 grams of protein, 35 grams of carbs and 4 grams of fat. That’s rougly 350 kcals in total – perfect for meal when combined with a slice or two of bread. Or for a small snack as such.

See ya.

-Antti

Awesome Cheesecake Recipe, and Why You Couldn’t Afford Mine