The Ultimate Cheesecake Cookbook at Chef2Chef

With flavors as interesting as Cranberry Mint Cheesecake, Apricot Streusel Cheesecake, White Cassis Cheesecake, and Honey Fig Cheesecake, you'll use this book as much for ideas as you will for the recipes. Reynolds and Chanin love flavorings and extracts, and they begin by recommending their favorite producers and then use almost every flavor made by them. With the "Bonus" Magic Formula Which Will Allow You to Experiment and Concoct Your Own Personally Flavored Baked Cheesecake, you can add any of the flavors they haven't already, and you'll never have to make the same flavor twice. Reynolds and Chanin are imaginative and are sure to get your creative juices flowing with decadences such as Southern Peach Cheesecake, made with peach extract and preserves, coconut flakes, and chopped pecans, and crowd-pleasers such as Jamoca Cheesecake, made with instant espresso, coffee-flavored liqueur, chocolate, and walnuts. These are not the flat-topped, custardlike cheesecakes that belong on fine-dining dessert carts, but rather the rich, dense, lightly browned New York-style cheesecakes that gave the dessert its American-icon status. Don't worry about the cracks, Reynolds and Chanin reassure us--the baked sour-cream topping is the perfect foil. With 23 tips to encourage us, such as Think Positive, Use Plastic-Wrap Mittens to Press Down the Crumb-Crust Mix Around the Pan, and Never Bake Cheesecakes at the Last Minute, novice bakers should feel confident and will be amused by the authors' lighthearted tones.

The second master recipe is The Magic Formula Which Will Allow You to Experiment and Concoct Your Own Personally Flavored Nonbaked Cheesecake. It comes at the end of a chapter of recipes for nonbaked cheesecakes such as Holiday Ginger Pumpkin Cheesecake, Banana-Split Cheesecake, and Caramel Nut Cheesecake. These nonbaked cheesecakes call for sweetened condensed milk and an acidic fruit juice, which makes them to set up the way Key Lime Pie is set. They also contain a "fruit protector" (ascorbic acid and corn sugar) called Fruit Fresh.

The final section of the book is "Other People's Cheesecakes," and it serves to remind us that even if you already have our own favorite cheesecake recipes and techniques, you can never have too many. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Library Journal
Reynolds is the host of a nationally syndicated talk show and a cheesecake lover Joey Reynolds Cheesecakes are sold in Florida and New York. Chanin, also known as "Mother Wonderful," is a professional baker and the author of several other cookbooks. Here they present dozens of recipes for cheesecakes baked, nonbaked, lower-calorie, and "mini." Most of them are really variations on a master recipe; each recipe chapter, in fact, concludes with a "Magic Formula," the template for that type of cheesecake. For larger baking collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
I had high hopes when I bought this cookbook simply because it bills itself as THE ultimate cheesecake cookbook. Heck, I bought it without even browsing through it! It's easy enough to read: directions on how to make a perfect cheesecake, pointers to remember, etc. There are also sections for baked, non-baked and other people's favorite cheesecakes. The book's drawback is that it has NO PICTURES - not one (save for the one on the cover). For a cookbook especially, pictures are what urge and inspire the reader to try the recipe. Secondly, the recipes for the no-bake cheesecakes are (almost) the same as the baked ones. No fair! Do buy this book if you're just starting to make cheesecakes -the book will be a good guide. But if you're familiar with making cheesecakes, this book will only bore you with its lack of variety.