Today is Jennifer’s birthday! While she’s had to work all weekend, I’ve been doing my husbandly best to make it a fun birthday celebration. First, dinner and homemade dessert with my parents Friday night. Then there were presents last night — many presents. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say she’s been good this year. And then dinner tonight at her sister’s house.But the big story is about the cheesecake she requested. Remember the praline liqueur she put in the brownies recently? I sought out this wonderful nectar specifically for her cheesecake, appropriately called a praline cheesecake. Through diligent experimentation, I found that praline liqueur plus vanilla ice cream equals indescribable goodness.Back to the cheesecake. This was, as Jennifer pointed out, my inaugural cheesecake. She is the queen of cheesecake having honed her technique over several years. A friend asked if I was nervous about making her a cheesecake and I was reminded of a great quote from Alton Brown’s recent seminar in Nashville. During the filming of Feasting on Asphalt, his wife (with the help of both their mothers) moved into a new home. Since then, neighbors dropped by to welcome them but all committed a terrible southerner faux pax: they brought no food, no goodies! They were too intimidated to cook for Alton. His quote: “So, you were too lazy to cook and you’re going to blame me?!”Undaunted by the challenge of baking for my official baker, the gloves came off and the Alton Brown “Science, it’s what’s for dinner” shirt went on. Armed with Jennifer’s favorite cheesecake cookbook, I Love Cheesecake, and her encouragement, I set forth to build her birthday cheesecake.Foundation cliches aside, a wimpy crust can relegate a cheesecake into the ‘break’ category. The crust in this recipe is a combination of vanilla creme cookies, melted butter, and finely chopped pecans. The recipe calls for a 9″ springform pan, but Jennifer’s experience with recipes from this cookbook suggests that the filling will still be tall in a 10″ pan. While there is usually ample filling, she has found that many crusts are too skimpy as made from a recipe, so I doubled the crust recipe and used all of it.
