Cheesecake - FAIL

I made cheesecake yesterday, and I was very excited to share the recipe with you.



Pretty, isn't it? Well, I don't have a recipe for you.

I'm not holding out on you, I promise. This is a recipe that I tweaked and adapted from multiple recipes, and the last time I made it (at least a year ago; I guess I haven't been in the mood for cheesecake), I declared it perfect.

I was wrong.

I didn't spend a couple hours, a bunch of dirty dishes, and two pounds of cream cheese only to feed the garbage bin, because it is edible. It's actually pretty tasty, but it is not the perfect cheesecake I remembered.

One of the keys to good cheesecake is baking time - if it looks done when you take it out of the oven, it's probably overcooked. In my case, I was waiting to put cornbread in the oven for dinner, and I'm afraid I hustled the cheesecake out a little too fast.



Of course, I also wanted to be able to eat dessert before I went to bed, so I compounded the issue by putting it in the refrigerator too soon and making a crack in the middle. There's nothing wrong with a cracked cheesecake, to be sure, but I've always prided this recipe on being crack-proof ... so there you go.

Suffice it to say that I will be doing some cheesecake experiments in the coming weeks before I can truly proclaim this cheesecake to be foolproof, crack-free, or perfect.

But I can tell you right now, even an undercooked, cracked, imperfect cheesecake is pretty good drizzled with spiced cherry syrup.