A Journey Through Cheesecake

I am about to embark on a journey through the countless cheesecake recipes that I have come across over the years.  It all began with a little boy who thought the sound of cheese in a cake was absolutely disgusting.  I passed on the terrible sounding concoction every time it was mentioned because my imagination had it somewhere in the neighborhood of a grilled cheese sandwich with sugar, flour and icing, yuck.  So I avoided it for years.  Then one day, a family friend showed up with a chocolate chip cheesecake.  She is the kind of woman that when she brings food, you eat it.  Not because she is big and scary, no she is a tiny soft spoken Cajun.  It's because she makes some of the best food I have ever tasted and never anything I didn't like.  So I had a slice.  It was thick, and creamy, filled with miniature chocolate chips and a chocolate chip cookie crust.  It was the most perfect dessert I had ever placed into my mouth.  I had to have more.

It wasn't long until I got the recipe from her and started making my own.  They are the most incredible dessert ever, and relatively easy to make.  My friends started to multiply as they discovered my amazing creations.  Pretty soon I had people asking, "Hey, can you make a mocha cheesecake?" Or, "How about a vanilla raspberry cheesecake?"  And so it began.  I have made so many different variations, I can't even remember them all, so I decided to start writing it all down and even branch out and try new recipes.

Here's the secret 3,2,1... My recipe is 3 packages of cream cheese, 2 eggs, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk.  For the crust, you just make crumble crust from whatever you think is going to complement the variation you are making.  Mix the crumbs with some melted butter, don't use more than 2 1/2 tablespoons.  If you use oreo's, cut back on the butter, sometimes I don't use any at all because the creamy filling is basically sweet lard in whatever scientifically engineered form they came up with.  So that is a cheesecake, now let your imagination run wild and change it at will. Bake it at 350 for an hour then cool it slowly.

I intend to bake a huge variety of recipes to find out which work the best and compare the results.  I am going to post my findings and my changes to the recipes, because God knows, I can't leave a recipe alone to save my life.

By the way, the homemade doughnuts I made from pioneer woman's website were a total failure.  I apparently suck at anything involving bread, but I am going to try again until I get it right.