So I made my first gluten free cheesecake. It came out smashing, I have to tell you - but this is a great situation to vet human memory. The story behind this recipe is probably better than the cake itself.
Warning: My (mis)adventures in tracking baking recipes have had more intrigue than a good spy novel.
My father, when he was alive, for decades made this incredible Boston style cheesecake. Friends, family would come from all over to get some ( no kidding here ). People would pay him to make them ( bargain price of $25 ) and I even would pay him to make me one for when the office pool on who makes the best cheesecake would come up and I would destroy the competition. Well, one day, at a new job, yup, the pool arises and the tall talk starts. No kidding, I conceded to a girl who had bested my father's cheesecake - it was a-maz-ing. I should have known because while she was normally quite the friendly chatterbox, but when it came to this competition she only sported a icy death stare that said without sound, "I'm going to destroy you, little man". And boy, did she ever.
So I asked her for the recipe: "No". I begged her for the recipe: "No". I offered $50 for the recipe: "No". I offered $200 for the recipe: "No". She refused at all costs and told me the story of her recipe. When she was a young girl ( 6 or 7 years old? ), she would sit on the front steps of her house to each lunch often, being outside, enjoying the sunshine and people traffic. A bag lady would typically swing by each day and she would offer the bag lady part of her lunch, small change, etc. Now, you know this isn't common, many/most people treat bag ladies cruelly. So they formed a loose friendship and she enjoyed seeing her every day. One day, she had some cheesecake and offered some to the bag lady. The bag lady in a deep East European accent ( Bulgarian? ) responded without even tasting the girl's cheesecake, "my dear child, that is not cheesecake, I will bring you cheesecake". My work friend/the girl didn't see the bag lady for a few days and then she came and brought her an entire cheesecake with the recipe - the very same which years later destroyed my father's cake.
I said, cool! Now let me have it, you have to now that I know the story: "No". Fuck me, right? Well, months go by and I stop pestering her and even forgot about it and then one day, she approaches me aggressively ( not with anger, but with determination ), "Hey, you still want that recipe for $200?". I'm like, "well, yeah". "It's yours". I was taken aback and had to ask what had changed and if everything was ok. She had serious financial problems with her husband, pissed off as all get out at her husband and didn't care anymore and simply wanted the money. I was happy, but concerned, didn't want her to betray the recipe over desperation. She replied, "Who gives a shit, it's only cake".
Now, I'm a cookie baker by trade, not cakes, and of course, being young and stupid, I didn't make the thing and lost it over the years. Now that I've got Celiac and have accepted my gluten-free life, I'm converting my recipes to be gluten free; I'll have to tell you the story behind my Forever Cookies sometime, that was a 17 year journey of madness. Just so happens, recently I decided time to recycle the graveyard of hard drives accumulating in my home office/den. I'm scanning through old files making sure I didn't miss anything from copying them over in the past. And yes, I find this old recipe, 20 years after I received it. I thought I lost it since the title was mis-spelled ( cheezecake ), so it never came up in my searches for it.
Now, am I remembering it correctly? Is it coming out the same as hers? I don't know. The taste is familiar, so I'm on the right track, but I don't remember exactly how it tasted. My family has tried it and they like it, but they resoundingly declare it's not as good as my father's.
Maybe I should have murdered one of my brothers when I first tried it all those years ago ...