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I love cheesecake.

For many years, I celebrated the end of a successful school year by sharing this cheesecake with my Advanced Placement European History students after they took their tests.

I’ve taken it to my friends at my pups’ veterinary hospital. It has been a birthday cheesecake, a get-well cheesecake, an I’m sorry cheesecake. It has gotten me through some pretty teary times, too.

My husband used to stand impatiently beside the sink when I made it to be sure that he could savour the left-over batter—and, make no mistake, Dixon was an exacting cheesecake connoisseur. Woe be to me if I let the pan slip into the water before he could retrieve the remnants of the batter!

You will not regret giving this recipe a try.

Recipe: Classic Cheesecake

Crust
2 1/2 C. finely-crushed graham crackers
1/3 pound melted butter
1/5 C. sugar
Add sugar and melted butter to crushed graham crackers. Press mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a springform pan.
Filling Batter
1 C. sugar
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese (room temperature)
3 eggs (separated)-Beat egg whites until they are very stiff
1/5 pound butter
1/2 T. vanilla
1 T. fresh lemon juice
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
Beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time to the cheese and sugar mixture. Blend in room-temperature butter, vanilla and lemon juice. Fold in stiffly-beaten egg whites being careful not to mix whites too much; you want to leave as much air in the egg whites as you can to give your cheesecake a light texture. Pour this mixture into the crust and smooth top.
Bake on the middle shelf in your oven for 40 minutes at 325 degrees F. When the cheesecake is done, leave it in the unopened oven until the cheesecake cools completely. Leaving the cheesecake to cool completely will reduce the cracking on the top of the cheesecake.
You can serve this cheesecake plain or with fruit.

Everyone loves ice cream, particularly on these muggy days we’ve been experiencing here in Southern California. With temperatures hovering in the high 90s (and breaking the 100 degree F mark on a couple of occasions), I haven’t mustered the energy to do a lot of cooking. Somehow, I can always find the energy to make (and eat) ice cream. Go figure.

Here is an easy recipe for strawberry ice cream  that I’ve made with great success. My neighbor Gene loves it. I love it and Juliet loves it, too.

In my wanderings on Internet food sites, this recipe turned up on a Pakastani site. (My food wanderings on the Internet take me far afield sometimes.)

I used fresh ripe strawberries from the Long Beach Farmers Market to make this recipe and suspect that this recipe would translate well to the use of other fruits.

Recently I found myself restless and awake after a few hours of fitful sleep. At around 3 a.m., I got up and treated myself a big bowl of  strawberry ice cream and promptly went back to sleep. I guess that makes this a (mental) health food.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Strawberry Ice Cream

• 3 cups sliced strawberries
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups half and half
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Puree strawberries in a food processor. Set aside.

Whip eggs in food processor until they are frothy. Add half-and-half, whipping cream, sugar and vanilla to the eggs.

Add pureed strawberries to the egg mixture and mix to combine. You will have a relatively thin batter. 

Freeze in your ice cream maker according to your ice cream maker’s directions. After approximately 25 minutes you should have ice cream that is the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Place the ice cream into a glass bowl and freeze for several hours.