“It’s a piece of (cheese)cake!”
For a long time I thought the expression “as easy as pie” referred to the act of making a pie. That, of course, never made sense to me as I have generally found pies rather difficult to make, even mud ones. But then I discovered that the expression refers to the eating of a pie. That of course is an easier task than making one, but even consuming a pie can sometimes be a challenge if you think of eating a hot Australian meat pie standing up at the footie, trying not to scald your mouth and not drip mince filling and tomato sauce all over your clothes.
These days we think of “easy as pie” or “it’s a piece of cake” as describing a task that is simple, uncomplicated and a pleasure to do.
Making a cheesecake fits that description. Not for all cheesecakes, but there are hundreds and hundreds of recipes for delicious ones that are easy to make.
We recently had a week at Olive’s Cottage. It was meant to be a mixture of jobs (painting and maintenance to be arranged), catching up with family and friends (an 80th birthday) plus a bit of good old relaxation.
The cottage garden was looking magnificent. Despite the variable skies of the spring weather we extended more invitations than we probably should have for a meal in the garden or on the deck. As a result, we were soon in need of a few quick but reliable recipes to get us through.
Cheesecakes are one of those dishes that are very popular, need not be complicated to make and can be prepared well ahead of time. Even the day before. You will find that there are countless recipes available from your cookbooks and from the Internet. It is just a case of deciding on which one.
We had a ready answer, as a young reader had earlier sent through a link to a cheesecake recipe that he thoroughly recommended: White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake.
We followed the recipe exactly except to use two thirds of the amount of gelatine, on the advice of our contributor. Local raspberries had just started to appear on the shelves and were perfect for the garnish while we used frozen raspberries for the cake itself. We were able to make it in the morning for guests arriving that evening.
And there was plenty left over the next day when we drove to the other side of the Tamar for a family picnic at Rosevears.
We concluded this cheesecake did fit the concept of “easy as pie” both to make and to eat!