This recipe comes from my grandma Elaine. She’s turning 90 this July, and we’re all going out to New York to celebrate. Will there be cheesecake? I sure hope so, and knowing Grams, there will be no shortage of sweets. To call these recipe cards well-loved would be an understatement. The neat pencil script is smudged from years of use and the paper is covered in splashes and splotches of vanilla extract. My mom made this cheesecake, 4 of them to be precise, every morning before her shift at the deli in the 70’s. With a hand-mixer, no less. She even told me that after she left her job at the deli (refusing to sell the ‘secret’ recipe to the owners), one of her regular customers begged her to share the recipe with him. He was so adamant about getting the recipe for his favorite cheesecake, that he snuck in when she wasn’t looking and copied it. The nerve! Luckily she didn’t hold a grudge as he was our family’s dentist for many years (dentists like sweets too, apparently).
Grandma’s index cards paired with mom’s post-it note. That about sums it up right there. And here I am, adding my own story to the mix in the form of a blog post, making 3 generations of stories and memories written between the lines of one incredible cheesecake recipe. There’s history and tradition and plenty of love all baked up in a graham cracker crust.
This cheesecake is perfectly imperfect. The egg whites make the cake puff, almost souffle-like, cracking and settling as it cools. Glamor shot it is not. But, as my mom says, that’s what the sauce is for. It’s velvety smooth and surprisingly light, and not too sweet; rather, slightly tangy with a hint of almond. It could most certainly be doctored with a multitude of sauces, but for me, personally, there’s something so satisfying about the classic combo of cheesecake and strawberry. Not your grandma’s cheesecake? No, it’s MY grandma’s cheesecake.
Total Time: 6 hours
