Cheesecake Snob
Mar 29th, 2009 by craig
My name is Craig, and I’m a cheesecake snob.
Last week, after putting Sam and J’Neil on a train back to Kennewick from Portland, and picking up Allison from the train down from Seattle, we decided on dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Dinner was very good. I had an excellent Cuban sandwich, one of the best I’ve had. Then, we had to have the obligatory cheesecake. Since we were pretty full, we had it to go, and took it back to the hotel to enjoy as a late night snack.
I’ve been told that I make a pretty good cheesecake. It’s one of those things that get requested often, even J’Neil likes it. I make it from scratch, and will top it with a number of things: chocolate sauce, fresh berries, caramel or my favorite: a raspberry sauce. So, I’ll grant it’s little enough, but on that basis I’ll assume the role of expert. And in my expert opinion, The Cheesecake Factory should come up with another name for their establishment.
I had the Lemon Raspberry Cream Cheesecake, described as “Raspberry Vanilla Cake, Creamy Lemon Cheesecake, Raspberry Lady Fingers and Lemon Mousse.” Now, I guess I can’t speak for other varieties, but at best this was only a third cheesecake. It’s mostly crust and whipped cream. If you look closely at the picture (which came from The Cheesecake Factory website), you can see that the bottom third is crust, the middle is cheesecake, and then the whole thing is topped with a layer of whipped cream. And the piece I had came with even more whipped cream. Very, very sweet whipped cream. So, to be clear, what I had was a vanilla cake, topped with a little bit of cheesecake and a lot of whipped cream. In my lexicon, I’ll now refer to this establishment as the Cake Factory.
To be fair, the raspberry sauce they used, which is not on the piece in the picture, was absolutely wonderful.
I have yet to try the Cheesecake (or Cake) Factory’s cheesecake. I am glad you didn’t give it an excellent review, so that now when I go there, I *hopefully* won’t be disappointed, since my expectations will be low 🙂
I’ll definitely have to try your cheesecake sometime…
I, on the other hand, quite enjoyed my cheesecake (and southwest salad) at Cheesecake Factory. Traditional cheesecake is rarely my first choice for dessert (I would typically prefer a chocolate hot fudge cake or creme brulee) but the Chocolate Mouse Cheesecake (chocolate cookie crust, chocolate cheesecake, chocolate mouse, chocolate shavings, whipped cream) was delicious and really satisfied my chocolate craving, even though it contained no cake. 🙂 I’d order it again in a heartbeat.
I have a from scratch recipe for an Oreo Cheesecake that I do love but haven’t made for years…. my friend Ken talked me into making it for him years ago, even though it sounded WEIRD to me. Boy was I surprised – it was absolutely delicious – and much better the second day after the cookies have time to really soften and permeate the cheesecake… it became a bit of a comfort food for us. Very yummy.
Craig, I will look forward to trying your version sometime soon!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……
Hmmm. Well, I love cheesecake. And I love Craig’s cheesecake. (Just ate some with blackberry sauce on it a little while ago). But I also like chocolate cheesecake. And oreo cheesecake. And lemon raspberry, and white chocolate blueberry, and all sorts of cheesecakes. And, well, I like whip cream on it too!
I really did like the Cake Factory as a place to eat; I’ll just be much more selective in the future about having cheesecake there – in fact, I believe I’ll have to try some of their other desert type things.
Being a cheesecake snob, and having had quite a bit of my own cheesecake lately (it’s one of the few things that are consistent with the diet we’re working on around here), I’m with Allison: these days I would probably prefer regular pie, a good carrot cake, ice cream or even creme brulee (which I also think I make a pretty good version of) for my deserts.