The Cheesecake Holiday

This past weekend, those of us in the USA celebrated memorial day and this year, those of us who are Jewish celebrated the holiday of Shavuot, also known as the Festival of First Fruits and the Festival of Weeks. It is one of the three agricultural festivals. We also celebrate the day that the Jews received the Torah or Five Books of Moses. It is the custom to eat dairy meals on this holiday. For many this means blintzes and/or cheesecakes. Thus in our family, we also call it the Cheesecake Holiday. I have a feeling that we are not alone in this. 

Like many food bloggers, I too have a collection of cookbooks and cooking magazines that are underused. Of all the many cheesecake recipes I have, I chose the one from Fine Cooking magazine, from April/May, 2010. The article provides a basic recipe and then gives you numerous ways to improvise. The link to the article is here. Just follow the steps in the interactive and at the end you will be rewarded with the recipe.

Because I make cheesecake so infrequently, I decided to make a very basic cake. I used two packages of regular cream cheese, one package of neufchatel and 2/3 cup of light sour cream. I also used low fat graham crackers for the crust. The texture came out rich and creamy. I also prepped some strawberries to serve on top. For those of you who are taking part in the Tuesdays with Dorie/ Baking with Julia blogging group, the recipe for the berries is the one we will be using for the French Strawberry cake. Mix a little sugar with strawberries, let sit and then mash up.

For those of you who would like more information about Shavuot, the link is here.