Cheesecake photos!

No, *literal* cheesecake, silly! I made this recipe today from one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, and while I like the cookbook, this is one tricky cheesecake. It has about eleven steps - mix the crust, bake for eight minutes at one temperature, meanwhile mixing ridiculous amounts of cream cheese and eggs (all room temperature!) together with sugar and the zest of two lemons... meanwhile, I had cool-ish cream cheese, cold eggs, couldn't find the right attachment for the upright mixer so I ended up using the bread hook, and while I did have real lemons, I could only find fake vanilla, which is practically a crime against this cheesecake.

Then you need to bake it at one temperature for one time, change temperatures and bake for another 75 minutes, then (and I swear, I am not making this up) turn the oven off and leave it open and let the cheesecake rest in the oven for 30 minutes, then on the counter for 2 hours, then in the refrigerator... I may have conflated some of those steps after turning off the heat. I ended up grateful I hadn't needed to teach the cheescake how to read before buying it a car.

But the resulting cheesecake? Very, very yum. Just really amazingly yum. Grace posed for a picture with the designated birthday-china cake plate; Peter insisted on adding a candle and would have put in thirty-odd more if he'd had the chance. And they ate, and birthday fun was had by all.