Photo by A Studios on Unsplash
This is the third holiday recipe in our series from the Tumbleweird Narrators, who wanted to share some of their favorite dessert recipes and the stories behind them. Each story has an accompanying audio file, similar to some of the stories you’ll find each month in Tumbleweird. You can read the recipes and listen to each narrator tell the story behind the food they make, and why it’s meaningful to them.
This final entry is from Rae Witte, who has spent years perfecting their cheesecake recipe. They say that "food is the ultimate love language."
Cheesecake!
Rae Witte
You're listening to Tumbleweird. I’m Rae Witte, and today I’m going to tell you about cheesecake!
So, two things about me to start with.
One: Growing up, food wasn’t my family’s love language, it was our only language. Like, you could speak hate with food and you could speak love with food. It didn’t matter, there was food involved. So it's really important to me when interacting with other people — and feeding other people — that I make them something that I know they are going to enjoy.
Second thing about me: I like to complicate every single thing that I do… to the greatest extent of my ability.
So. Cheesecake… scratches both of those itches, I guess? Because it can be a fairly finicky dessert to make, ya know? It's baked (this one is — not the refrigerated kind, nothing like that) so that, ya know, that takes some getting used to. You have to know your oven, you have to pay attention to it, you have to temp it.
Yeah. I love it.
And it's even further complicated by the fact that when I go to a gathering, I make a plain cheesecake, but I make… I don’t know… somewhere between three and five sauces to accompany it, based on whoever I know is going to be there and what some of their favorite flavors are that I’ve just kind of picked up and stored in my memory to be able to cater to their palette.
Yep. I told you.
So anyway, some of the sauces that I’ve done in the past that I really enjoyed were :
- A cranberry-apple cider reduction that was just phenomenal on cheesecake.
- A peppermint sauce. That one was for a Christmastime gathering with family and friends. And, you know, everybody likes mint and chocolate…. I don’t like mint and chocolate. I do like mint. So I made a chocolate sauce and a mint sauce and people could have them together (and I heard that was really great), or they could have them separately (and I thought that was better). Everybody was happy.
- Oh, berries! Those three berry blends that you can get for smoothies that have like… blueberries and strawberries and… I don’t know, raspberries or whatever other berry they want to put in. Those cook down beautifully, and if you have someone like my wife who has a retainer and doesn’t like seeds, you can… you know… just take a couple extra hours of your day and run that through a sieve and then it makes this delicious, super smooth berry sauce that goes wonderfully with cheesecake.
And that way, everyone can have something that's their favorite thing to eat on cheesecake.
Oh, and when you make the cheesecake, make sure that before you get started you take out your cream cheese, your eggs, and your heavy cream. Get ‘em out of the fridge, put ‘em on the countertop, let ‘em come to room temp. Because everything mixes together better when it's the same temperature.
So, I hope you try this recipe. I hope you love it!
I didn’t give any recipes for the sauces because… they don’t exist. I just put whatever I’m inspired to put in a pan that I think someone will like and cook it. Or I look up things that are similar and flavor them differently. So, use your imagination and have fun. Happy Holidays!
CHEESECAKE
Before you start making this cheesecake, look at the ingredients list and set the required amount of cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, and eggs out on the counter to come to room temp. Also, if your event is today…sorry, you should have started yesterday because a night in the fridge does wonders.
Crust - It’s shortbread
- 1 cup butter
- ½ cup white sugar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder. Sift the flour/baking powder into butter/sugar mixture and mix into a rough dough - it will be lumpy, like a jumble of dough colored peas, and that's okay! Dump it into a 10” springform pan, shuffling the pan to distribute the lumps before lightly pressing it into a uniform thickness. Do not condense the crust too much as this will make it too dense after baking.
Bake for 10-15 minutes in a 350 degree F oven or until the edges have just begun to turn light golden brown. Allow to cool while preparing the filling.
Increase oven temp to 475 degrees F while preparing the filling.
Cheesecake Filling
- 2 ½ pounds cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup to 1 ¾ cups white sugar (I prefer less sugar, you decide)
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- Vanilla to taste (I use about 1 tablespoon)
- 5 eggs, room temp
- 2 egg yolks, room temp
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream, room temp
If you didn’t take your cream cheese, eggs, and heavy whipping cream out of the fridge to come to room temperature already, stop. Right now. Take them out, and wait. Trust me, it's worth it. I also recommend scraping down the sides of the bowl regularly throughout the process.
In a very large bowl, combine room temperature cream cheese with the amount of sugar you’ve settled upon until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together your room temperature eggs and egg yolks. Add the eggs to the cream cheese & butter and mix until it’s even smoother. This is your last chance to prevent lumps. Get it smooth. Add flour, mixing until just combined. Add heavy whipping cream and your favorite amount of vanilla, again mixing until just combined.
Pour the filling over the cooled crust and bake at 475 degrees F for 10 minutes. Reduce temperature to 200 degrees F and continue baking for 1 hour. Turn the oven off but leave the cake in the oven for at least another hour to allow for slower cooling.
Note: The baking process can vary widely based upon your oven, elevation, and sometimes for no observable reason at all. Getting this just right may take some practice. I’ve had success using a humidity tray to help slow the cooling process but I do not place the springform pan directly into a water bath. If you’ve tried without a humidity tray and didn’t love the result, try placing a pan of water on the rack below your baking rack when you first begin and leave it in the oven while the cheesecake bakes. Be sure the pan is deep enough to hold sufficient water for the entire process as some will evaporate.
Chill in the refrigerator overnight. I like to wait until it's cooled off to prevent condensation collecting on the cover and dripping down onto the cheesecake, which makes the top a little slimy. But if you’ve gotta cover it, that won’t hurt anything (as long as you can accept some slime).
Rae Witte is a nonbinary voice actor and narrator. Sharing stories from a queer perspective is their favorite work in any genre, along with epic fantasy, sci-fi, and middle grade shenanigans. Rae has been narrating for Tumbleweird since August 2024. You can learn more about their work at raewitevo.com.
About The Tumbleweird Narration Project
Tumbleweird Narrators provide real human voice narration to articles and stories at tumbleweird.org. We are committed to bringing current events and community information to everyone who needs and enjoys the narration experience, with a human touch. Tumbleweird has a mission to “serve the truly powerful: the underdogs, the misfits, the outsiders, the newcomers, those on the margins, and the ones who defy the status quo.” We narrate their stories.
