Do You Have a Dental Plan to go with that Cheesecake?

When my husband Rick and I were still dating I decided to make him his favourite cheesecake – it was an Oreo cheesecake, a recipe of his mom’s. The recipe looked simple enough – cream cheese, oreos, a bunch of other stuff, what could possibly go wrong? I made the cake. I put it on a heavy crystal plate of my mom’s and served it for dessert after dinner with my parents, my brothers, and Rick. When cutting into the cake it seemed a little hard so I got a bigger, sharper knife from the kitchen. This should have been my first clue. When trying to put a fork into the cake it was like trying to put a fork into a chunk of hard cheddar cheese. To say it was hard is an understatement. One would want to check their dental plan before trying a slice. To say it was inedible is putting it nicely. No one ate it….well, no one except my dad. My lovely, ever-encouraging dad. With both hands wrapped around his fork he chipped off pieces of the cake and choked down every bite….and declared it good! While cleaning up the dinner dishes I was going to throw the cake away but my dad told me not to rather wrap it up and put it in the fridge. So, the cake was wrapped up, still on the heavy crystal plate and placed in the fridge. Now, you have to understand the fridge I grew up with. Nothing was left to waste, leftovers were kept in various forms of tupperware, and the fridge was always packed. So putting the cheesecake in the fridge meant it was balanced on the various pieces of tupperware housing all those leftovers. Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, the next time the fridge was opened the cake fell off its precarious perch of various heights of tupperware and crashed to the ground. The heavy crystal plate broke but the cake, that hard piece of cheese, stayed fully intact. Pretty sure that cake could have been used as a spare tire.

Now jump forward about 30 years. It’s the Easter long weekend. Dinner is at my parent’s and I decided to make….yup you guessed it….cheesecake.  You’re probably thinking “what is she thinking?: Doesn’t she remember what happened last time she made cheesecake?! Does she hate her family?!”

Don’t fear, it was just a no-bake cheesecake….baby steps and all…..and I may have crossed my fingers as I put it together. Really, what could possibly go wrong?