Cheesecake

A **cheesecake** is a dessert cake made of cheese (usually cream cheese but sometimes ricotta), eggs, and sugar. It often has a graham cracker crumb crust, sometimes held together by melted butter. The filling has a very heavy, smooth texture. It sometimes has sour cream to make it easier to shape and may have fruit flavoring such as strawberry, blueberry, or lemon. It is often topped with fresh fruit or chocolate.

## History 
Cheesecake is now often thought to be part of American cooking, but it has a long history. Cheese making began around 2000, and scientists who study people in the past have found cheese molds almost as old.

Cheesecakes are known to go back to at least Greece. In the 100s[[Anno Domini|]], the writer Athenaeus's *Dinner-Table Philosophers* mentioned the poet Callimachus (around the 200s) used to have a book by an "Aegimius" about the art of making cheesecakes (, *Plakountopoukón Sýngramma*). Cheesecake may have been given to the sportspeople during the Olympic Games, which started in 776.

Even before the Romans took over Greece, they had begun making cheesecakes as well. M. Porcius Cato's *Book on Farming* (written around 160) mentions three kinds of cakes'**, **', and ''''for use as offerings to the gods. Placenta cakes were the closest to today's cheesecakes, since its crust and filling are made separately. 

Europeans stopped using yeast and started adding beaten eggs to their cheesecakes around the 1700s. This made it taste more like a dessert than a cheesebread. 

Cheesecake recipes were brought to the United States as people moved there from Europe. Most of today's kinds of cheesecake ("New York-style cheesecake") come from the kind created by William Lawrence of Chester, New York, in 1872. He was trying to make something like the soft French Neufchâtel cheese and ended up with a heavy, creamy "unripened cheese".

## Types 
There is an all-garlic restaurant in Stockholm where they offer a garlic cheesecake.

## Other 
Sonya Thomas holds the world record for eating the most cheesecakes in a given time. She ate 11 pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes.

Chef Raffaele Ronca of the USA created the world's most expensive cheesecake, selling for an astonishing $4,592.42 at Ristorante Rafele in New York on October 30, 2017. This luxurious dessert boasted premium ingredients.

## Gallery 

File:New York cheese cake from Marco's.jpg| New York cheesecake
File:Yellow cheese sponge cakes from Original Cake Shop.jpg| Cheese sponge cake
File:Japanese cheese cake in western.jpg| Japanese cheesecake
File:A Carrot cream cheese cake from Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong.jpg| Carrot cheesecake 
File:Manga Basil Cheese Cake with Mango Ravioli3.jpg| Cheesecake with mango
File:Käse-Schmand-Kuchen.jpeg
File:My first cheesecake.jpg| Baked cheesecake with raspberry 
File:Two cheesecake from local restaurant.jpg|Oreo cheesecake and New York cheesecake 
File:Japanese Marble Cheesecake with ice cream.jpg|Japanese maple cheesecake 
File:Blueberry rare cheesecake.jpg|Blueberry cheesecake 
File:Local cheesecake on new burgh cafe.jpg|Swiss cheesecake 
File:1 Ricotta cheesecake with icecream.jpg|Ricotta cheesecake
File:Kaesekuchen-ohne-boden.jpg|German cheesecake without bottom 

## References