Homemade Cheesecake

One of the things I craved some weeks ago was a cheesecake. But that was more or less a pipe dream, and life, and cravings, moved on.

In my milking, I had about a gallon of milk that I pulled from the fridge in the morning to prepare for the evening milking. By evening, it had separated into curds and whey, and I haven't had inspiration on what is best to do with it.

Then I remembered (after reading in my beloved Nourishing Traditions) that curds are basically cream cheese, and a simple draining would be enough to extract it. The soured cream on the top was—wait for it—sour cream (!).

My gallon of milk yielded enough sour cream and cream cheese to make a cheesecake (sans graham cracker crust, as I haven't found a reasonable recipe that uses bread crumbs, and I haven't found a good source of gluten-free graham crackers locally).

The very fact that I considered baking shows that today was a very good day for me. So good that I actually found myself sitting up with the computer for a time. This was truly outstanding, as just last week I thought, "Wow. I used to sit up to do my work! I can hardly imagine what that must have felt like." (I tanked at 4:30 and am still trying to gain the strength to milk the cow, but until 4:30, I didn't even have morning dry heaves! It was a mini-miracle!)

So my homemade cheesecake was a bit of a disappointment. I must have broken one of the six eggs, or maybe the pan we were whipping the whites in was a bit greasy, as the whites refused to form stiff peaks. The cream cheese mixture sort of curdled in cooking (or maybe I needed to let it sit a LOT longer before cutting into it, but Isaiah was eager). And, although I realize that Rapadura is a healthier form of sugar, it tends to yield grainy, strong flavored baked goods. The end product is mostly edible, I suppose, but not terribly cheesecake-y.