Cheeeeeeeesecake

Cheesecake is actually technically a baked custard, owing to its ingredients. I will not go into the ingredients here, nor will I justify myself. You can order Alton Brown's cheesecake episode from foodtv.com and he will explain to you why it is considered a baked custard. I will assume you are familiar with the cheesecake and its variations from this point forward.

I love cheesecake. It's my favorite dessert by far. It can be dense and short with a thick crust or light and fluffy and piled high with a thin one. There are two officially recognized types of cheesecakes, a "New York Style" cheesecake and a "French Style" cheesecake. Contrary to popular opinion, "New York Style" cheesecake does not refer to a flavor, though it is commonly used to imply a plain or vanilla flavored unadorned cheesecake.

The New York Style cheesecake is dense and can sometimes be a solid, unbaked block of cream cheese mixed with sugar. (The no-bake cheesecake, however, is not recommended for consumption. They suck.) More commonly, the quality baked version of New York cheesecake is simply a dense, flavor infused block of "cheesecake" crusted on the bottom and sides by a layer of graham cracker. The French Style cheesecake is quite the opposite in consistency to the New York cheesecake. It is light and fluffy with an almost mousse like body and texture. It is generally flavored with a layer of jam sandwiched between its "cheesecake body" and is crusted only on the bottom by a graham cracker crust.

Personally, I am a fan of New York cheesecake, plain flavored. There are exceptions though, like the mango cheesecake I had in Hull, Quebec at Le Tartuffe *before* it had become overrun with tourists who had read about it in the paper. Right now the most reliable cheesecake comes from Peter Luger's in Brooklyn, which serves an enormous slice of heaven in classic New York style which always begs to be ordered whenever possible. But back to the exceptions. Most recently, these exceptions have come from Fortnum and Mason in London. They serve French style cheesecake (obviously) and in these adorable little gold-colored shells all neatly wrapped in a plastic rim which keeps their uncrusted sides from getting squashed in transit. I have had two of these mini cakes (well, one and a half...one was shared with the boy) and they are presented here in technicolor:



And what more can I say about them? They were delicious. They were so good, it seemed as if F&M whipped cream into their cream cheese (more than usual, anyway, and note the extra thick graham crusts. They must have been a liberal sprinkling of crack to get both of them that good. The euphoria post-consumption was absolutely real. I could go on about them. But I won't.