Cheesecake

I blogged a while back about toffee crisp and almond cheesecake. But in fact cheesecakes are the centre of my baking world, and I make hundreds of them. The first cake I ever made was a mascarpone and lime cheesecake, taken from a recipe card freebie at Sainsburys. I made it over and over again, to the barely masked hilarity of my extended family, until I decided to take a brave leap into the unknown, and attempted Nigella's dark chocolate cheesecake. An instant hit, and it opened the floodgates. Pumpkin cheesecake with butterscotch sauce. New York cheesecake. White chocolate and raspberry cheesecake. Pecan and fudge cheesecake. And since I made the toffee crisp and almond cheesecake, adapted from the Magnolia Bakery receipe for Heath Bar cheesecake, I have played hari kiri with the toppings, courtesy of those mini bite things from Cadburys that I have been obsessing about recently. In fact my greatest baking triumph, was when I contributed a dark chocolate cheesecake for a charity auction, and it raised over 50 quid. That was, like, five years ago and I still get a warm glow whenever I think about it. I have made square ones and round ones, mini ones and party ones, bain marie cheesecakes and fridge cheesecakes. It has a satisfying stodge to it that your basic flour/butter/sugar combo cannot hold a candle to. Hence a rerun of the toffee crisp cheesecake was necessary as a celebration for the end of my first day, Sans Boot. It was hell. I don't know how I managed to lull myself into a reverse Cinderella fantasy that losing the boot would restore my mobility and endow me with a beautifully reconstructed left foot all in the same move, but what actually happened was, that the new foot emerged puffy, swollen and only able to fit into a pair of old trainers; the toe and heel refused to move at all so that walking turned into more of a painful half-hop up the street; the muscles in my left leg below the knee had so much wastage from three months of no use, and the right leg had had to work so much harder, that the right leg was twice the size of the left. In essence, it was a mess. But I am irrepressibly glass half full in my assessment of the day's boot-free experience, so as I staggered exhausted into the house, I figured I needed a major clap on the back for getting through it without falling over, spraining the other ankle, or simply giving up before I reached the tube station. Cheesecake. Cheesecake denotes effort where a sponge cake is more like, what this old thing?? Cheesecake shouts special, it shouts piggy, it shouts EAT ME. And we did. Lots.