The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook
If your ultimate cheesecake is rich and creamy, heavy with cream cheese, and best eaten in slivers, look no further. Joey Reynolds, syndicated talk-show host, and Myra Chanin, cookbook author and food writer, have teamed up to deliver the mother lode of cheesecake recipes. Although there are dozens and dozens of recipes in this book, they are all variations of two basic ones--baked and nonbaked.With flavors as interesting as Cranberry Mint Cheesecake, Apricot Streusel Cheesecake, White Cassis Cheesecake, and Honey Fig Cheesecake, you'll use this book as much for ideas as you will for the recipes. Reynolds and Chanin love flavorings and extracts, and they begin by recommending their favorite producers and then use almost every flavor  made by them. With the "Bonus" Magic Formula Which Will Allow You to Experiment and Concoct Your Own Personally Flavored Baked Cheesecake, you can add any of the flavors they haven't already, and you'll never have to make the same flavor twice. Reynolds and Chanin are imaginative and are sure to get your creative juices flowing with decadences such as Southern Peach Cheesecake, made with peach extract and preserves, coconut flakes, and chopped pecans, and crowd-pleasers such as Jamoca Cheesecake, made with instant espresso, coffee-flavored liqueur, chocolate, and walnuts. These are not the flat-topped, custardlike cheesecakes that belong on fine-dining dessert carts, but rather the rich, dense, lightly browned New York-style cheesecakes that gave the dessert its American-icon status. Don't worry about the cracks, Reynolds and Chanin reassure us--the baked sour-cream topping is the perfect foil. With 23 tips to encourage us, such as Think Positive, Use Plastic-Wrap Mittens to Press Down the Crumb-Crust Mix Around the Pan, and Never Bake Cheesecakes at the Last Minute, novice bakers should feel confident and will be amused by the authors' lighthearted tones.The second master recipe is The Magic Formula Which Will Allow You to Experiment and Concoct Your Own Personally Flavored Nonbaked Cheesecake. It comes at the end of a chapter of recipes for nonbaked cheesecakes such as Holiday Ginger Pumpkin Cheesecake, Banana-Split Cheesecake, and Caramel Nut Cheesecake. These nonbaked cheesecakes call for sweetened condensed milk and an acidic fruit juice, which makes them to set up the way Key Lime Pie is set. They also contain a "fruit protector" (ascorbic acid and corn sugar) called Fruit Fresh.The final section of the book is "Other People's Cheesecakes," and it serves to remind us that even if you already have our own favorite cheesecake recipes and techniques, you can never have too many.--Leora Y. Bloom