Cheesecakes

In retrospect, the first mistake was not checking for nuts.

Ironically, this applies both to the cookies I planned to bake with, and to the friends who came to eat them, but first things first.

Upon realizing that the cookies I had dragged Nick to four grocery stores for would kill Andrea (I had planned to use them for the cheesecake I would offer to her as safely nutless), the ugliness started. It didn't help that I never got that early start I had wanted; instead I found myself baking two cheesecakes on the same day that I planned to serve them. Both of them instructed me to chill them overnight. Whatever.

I sent poor, sweet Nick out to my local Key Foods, deciding to blend the two crust recipes a bit to produce an Andrea-proof result that would still be in the spirit of the original. And it was even going kind of okay, although this was about the point when Nick, who had returned and was watching me curse and yell with great curiosity, informed me that I was not in fact making my crust in a completely stupid and nonfunctioning food processor. It turns out I don't have a food processor. I have a blender.

Apparently, it matters.

Anyway. So I'm taking a bit from recipe 1, a bit from recipe 2, and making up a bit in the middle to make them fit, and feeling very clever, even if it is taking a million times longer than I had hoped. But what do you do when recipe 1 advises you to "Freeze crust for 15 minutes," and recipe 2 suggests that you "Bake crust at 325 until set, about 8 minutes"?

This was also when Nick asked where I planned to put the crust, since my borrowed springform pan was currently in the refrigerator full of pumpkin-Frangelico® cheesecake, which had gone off without a hitch. It did not go so well that I could pull it out of the pan 20 minutes after it had come out of the oven.

I thought about just scrapping the second cheesecake, I did. But...what would I do with four packages of cream cheese, or a tub of cranberries? And what would I feed Andrea?

Nick quickly washed my single-serving ramekins, and I set about the appalling task of covering the bottom of each with crust that was just entirely the wrong texture, because improvising is not my strength. They looked pretty good after "setting" in the oven (we opted to bake), but I could not focus on that right then.

"I don't think I have enough sugar."

I always read the ingredients list thoroughly before I use a recipe, and this was no exception. I had sugar, but I never noticed how much the second recipe asked for (2 cups, all together, but it's broken up deceptively). I had about 1 cup left. I turned to Nick, who was trying to hide under his laptop.

Since it was much closer than the grocery store, and we needed some other things from there anyway, I sent him to RiteAid. He was noticeably less sympathetic this time. He returned as I was getting out of the shower into which I had opportunistically snuck, and announced that the RiteAid hadn't had sugar. They had baking Splenda®.

Good enough.

Baking Splenda®, by the way, is incredible stuff. It measures cup-for-cup like sugar, but weighs essentially nothing at all. I kept spilling it because I couldn't feel it moving in the box, but it was seriously cool.

So, as I had for the first, easy cheesecake, I dumped all the ingredients into the bowl, and glanced back at my cookbook. And discovered that I should have mixed the ingredients together in about eight distinct stages. Oh, and this one would allegedly have to cool for four hours before chilling overnight. Like hell.

I turned on my nifty new hand mixer and powered through, muttering the whole time about fats carrying taste, eggs for texture, and other random dire predictions about my reckless all-at-once mixing. Nick was visibly concerned, although you would have to know him really well to know he wasn't just worried about his game of Civilization®.

Oh, and six of the eight mini-cheesecakes that resulted from the weird mousse I produced cracked massively in the oven.

But.

I think the first one--the hitch-free one?--was a little undercooked. And the mini-cheesecakes turned out wonderfully. So go figure.

Anyway, worn out from all these battles, I was not as cautious about monitoring small talk as I should have been, and so there came a point in the evening when my guests spent nearly an hour discussing placentae. I know that this is the plural of "placenta" because I just looked it up, but last night we were really struggling to figure it out.

"Wait a minute, guys," Andrea said thoughtfully. "Just think: what's the plural of 'polenta'?"

The next time I bake, I'm keeping her on hand. Just in case.