cheesecake recipe – In Good Taste

Fresh Cherry Cheesecake Bars

Maris Callahan — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 22:41:10 +0000

People ask me all the time: do you still cook a lot? The answer, as I think we all can guess, is no, but that doesn’t mean it never happens. Every once in awhile the urge to make a big, fantastic mess in my kitchen will strike and I’ll wind up with more leftovers than I can feasibly eat three days later. Ironically, when I do find myself in need of a hostess gift or with a potluck style party to attend, I also find myself with no time to do anything that takes more effort than running into a store to buy a bottle of wine with a pretty label. A few weeks ago, a group of my friends were planning to do one of my favorite Chicago summer activities and bring a picnic to a free concert at Millennium Park. I serendipitously had a large bag of cherries and a meeting-free afternoon, so I made fresh cherry cheesecake bars courtesy of Cooking Light. This is an absolutely perfect summer recipe. Though it requires use of an oven, which can be off-putting when the heat index is somewhere between “miserable” and “seventh circle of hell” you serve the bars […]

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Glenn’s Cheesecake

Maris Callahan — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:00:51 +0000

As if I needed an excuse to make cheesecake, my mother sent me an email this past weekend asking if she could write a guest post on In Good Taste. Since the recipe she wanted to share is so-good-it-should-be-illegal good, I obliged (among other reasons). I did a little baking yesterday and snapped some photos to accompany her post. By Daryl Callahan I have asked Maris if I could contribute a guest post here so that I could honor my brother Glenn. Glenn was my brother and best friend, a kind sensitive boy with a heart of gold. Stubborn? Yes, but that’s because he always knew he was right…and looking back he probably was! He aspired to be a comedy writer and director and he would have been very successful but he died on October 1, 1974 at the age of 20, from an inoperable brain tumor. When we were kids, sometime in the late 50’s, we pretended to get married. We even pretended my doll – whom we named Beth – was our daughter. As we grew up, every year on January 4 – through college – we sent each other anniversary cards. His kind spirit was not just […]

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Blueberry Sour Cream Torte

Maris Callahan — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:00:00 +0000

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be perfect. This was never a conscious decision; but rather one that I recognize looking back on my habits from years ago. Whenever I took notes in class, I would sometimes start them two, three times, ripping each sheet of paper from my notebook to start clean – if I made a spelling error, skipped a line or just plain disliked the way my handwriting looked. As soon as I reached the age where your parents stop picking out your clothes from the store, I always looked to other girls’ fashion senses before settling on my own. Regardless of whether something actually suited me I went through flannel button-down shirts in sixth grade, sweater vests in high school and low-rise jeans in college because everyone else was wearing them (and as I type this now: what was everyone thinking!?). At twenty-six, I’m starting to realize that perfect is a state of mind. For some people, perfect might be a corner office, a $300 pair of shoes. For another, perfect might be sitting outside on a patio at 3pm on a Wednesday with a cold beer. Someone’s perfect outfit is another person’s […]

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Vanilla Bean Cheesecake Bars

Maris Callahan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:00:00 +0000

When I want dessert, 99.9% of the time, I’ll look to something in the chocolate family. Not today. Today is all about the vanilla bean cheesecake. Generally, I’m not picky: chocolate ice cream, chocolate cookies and chocolate chips straight from the bag all count (although I’m not so proud of the latter). The other .1% of the time – or when I’m baking for people whose lives don’t revolve around cacao – I like rich, but simple desserts: like these thick and creamy vanilla bean cheesecake bars nestled in a buttery shortbread crust, from Baking Bites. I made them recently for a party and rather than baking them in a 9×13 pan and slicing them into twenty thin bars, I modified the baking instructions just a bit to accommodate an 8×8 inch baking pan and slicing them into small, square, “bite-sized” pieces. This was also my first endeavor with the vanilla bean – I was surprised how easy it is to slice them to pack such intense taste with such a small amount of flavoring. Save Print Vanilla Bean Cheesecake Bars Author: Baking Bites Recipe type: Sweet Treats Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 30 mins Total time: 50 mins Serves: 1 dozen […]

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