Cheesecake achieved
In an unsupervised moment, my toddler Drake managed to break all twelve of a new carton of eggs. In a frenzy of home economy, I stored the unshelled eggs and determined to find a recipe that would use them all as quickly as possible. I decided on a cheesecake, calling for 6 eggs plus 2 yolks.
I started at noon and was not able to slice it till 9:45 p.m. And slice it I did, rather than leaving it for the next day. Because there was no way I was not getting at least a little piece of what had taken up nearly all of the day and caused no small amount of trouble.
First, I had to bake the cookie crumb crust. I did; it looked great; I removed it to cool. Then, when I was heating the oven to 500 so the cheesecake could get a glossy top, smoke started pouring from the oven and the smoke alarm went off. Butter from the crust must’ve leaked out of the pan and onto the oven bottom. At 500, it had been burned to a black, smoking mess that could not be dislodged even with a scraper. What to do? Abandon the cheesecake, with its 2 and a half pounds of cream cheese and 8 eggs? Ask the neighbors if we could use their oven? Instead, I checked to see if the pan would fit in our toaster oven. It did, so I put the cheesecake in, burned the top because of how close the fit was, but then lowered the temperature. While the cheesecake baked for 90 minutes, I started the cleaning cycle on my regular oven. Once the cheesecake finally was done it had to cool for 3 hours, then chill for 3 hours, then sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. And at that point, I finally got cheesecake.
Was it worth it? I’m not sure. It was good, and I’ve eaten quite a lot of it this week. (In my defense, I haven’t been out much, so haven’t had the opportunity to share it. And cheesecake really isn’t toddler food.) I used a gingersnap cookie crust and put chopped bittersweet chocolate in it, so it’s got a bit of sass to it. But I’m not sure any dessert is worth all that trouble and time.