When I did TWO things off my life list?
No?
Okay. Here goes the first one.
Every Thanksgiving my workplace has a giant semi-potluck dinner for the whole office. (“Semi” because the main dishes are catered, the office brings sides and dessert.) And I thought, WOW, what a great time for me to attempt my Bleu Cheesecake that I’ve been wanting to make. But I can’t just bring a bleu cheesecake, I mean, it’s got to feed everyone. So I should do 60 mini-cheesecakes. Plus the poached pears in port wine reduction sauce to serve on the side.
So in case it sounds crazy to anyone else out there to attempt a new recipe on new cookware (that we had to drive to 5 places to get – Sur la Table is still the only place I’ve ever seen it) in an oven in a new apartment for new coworkers, oh and triple the recipe? Maybe you’re new to my blog. Because THIS IS HOW I ROLL.
Also, maybe you haven’t met my dad.
So I searched online for a recipe I wanted to try and found a few that I liked. Specifically, this one and other ones I can’t find. I picked and chose between recipes and ended up doing a graham cracker/walnut crust and using a mixture of “cheap” blue cheese from Whole Foods (aka $7 per pound, not $40) and the Rogue Creamery Anniversary Blue (plus the other ingredients).
In retrospect I should have bought 2 pans, but I’m cheap and only bought one. ONE pan that makes 12 mini-cheesecakes. And I wanted to make 60. So we spent all Sunday afternoon making these stupid things. We didn’t have my parents’ Vita-Mix yet, so we had to chop a TON of walnuts for the crust. Ain’t fun, btw. And then we made the filling. Some recipes like to leave the chunks of bleu in the cheesecake mixture. I wanted a smooth blended flavor. Loaded a pan of 12, put them in the oven, then waited. When they were ready, we let them cool, then unloaded them and did it all over again.
On the last batch, I was afraid the oven might be getting too hot so I lowered the heat. (It’s gas and I don’t think it adjusts itself, it’s not fancy.) While all of this was happening, I started the port reduction and followed the directions for poaching pears.
The end result? Somehow terrible. The cheesecakes were extremely salty for some reason (I did add Himalayan sea salt because I wanted them to be savory, but I stuck to the recipe) and the port didn’t reduce enough and the pears didn’t cook through but I didn’t notice until later. So I had 50+ mini-cheesecakes that I wasn’t going to bring to anybody.
We kept them in the fridge and on a whim the next day I tried one of the lighter-colored ones from the last batch. (Most of the cheesecakes had kind of boiled up and sunk during cooking and left giant brown splotches.) It was delicious.
So I brought them to work for just my team on the day AFTER our Thanksgiving meal. And everyone liked them. I took no pictures and didn’t even write about it because it was so stressful and the end result so disappointing. But there it is.
I now have a mini cheesecake pan and maybe I’ll play with different cheesecakes. Chocolate, another blue, vegan, etc.
Stay tuned for Part II, wherein I never want to eat chocolate again. Until the next day.
