My grandmother outside her house in the 1940s,
in the days when people wore hats to scrub the sidewalks out front.
For as long as I can remember, my grandmother made the most amazing cheesecake, unlike anything I've ever tasted in a restaurant, before or since. I actually remember riding my bicycle to a dairy store near our house to pick up the ingredients, then waiting what seemed like forever for one of these pieces of Heaven to be done. When I went off to college, my grandmother made sure to have a cheesecake made for me on any weekend I was home.
When she passed away in 1990, no one thought about my grandmother's recipe. We thought my mother would remember it. (She didn't.) And so the recipe of exactly how to make the cheesecake was lost to time. I think I had my last bite of one some time in 1989.
My family members tried to duplicate it many times, based on what we could recall, but it was never right. In the past few years, I made at least 10 attempts myself, but in each, something just wasn't quite "it."
Recently, my sister was cleaning at my parents' house and pulled an old book from a shelf to dust. Out fell a card written in my grandmother's handwriting, and dated on her birthday in 1971. It was the recipe for her cheesecake, which dates back to her mother and the early 1900s.
This afternoon, I got all the ingredients and tried it. The hour waiting for baking seemed like days, and it took even longer to cool. At about 9 p.m., I tried it.
For the first time in 27 years, I had a slice of that amazing cheesecake, which is officially called a "Cottage Cheese Pie." (My grandmother always called it cheesecake.)
So, for the chefs, cooks and foodies here, I offer it to you, as written down by my grandmother in 1971:
Cottage Cheese Pie:
1 pint creamed cottage cheese
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
Sprinkle of cinnamon
Plain 10" pie crust
Place cottage cheese in blender -- beat until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time.
Mix sugar, flour & salt together and add along with milk, then add vanilla along with melted butter.
Pour mixture into pan (10-inch uncooked pie shell) and sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.
Bake approximately one hour - 325 to 350 degrees.
Dennis63's notes on making the cheesecake:
Two keys: Use smooth cottage cheese, not "small curd," but whipped "creamed cottage cheese," (That's not "cream cheese." It's "creamed cottage cheese." Hard to find, but yes, they have it.)
Use a plain pie crust, not graham cracker crust. For many years, my grandmother made her own pie crusts from scratch, but after trying a plain Pillsbury crust one time, she said she'd never make another crust from scratch.
I bought all the ingredients -- cottage cheese, milk, butter, sugar, salt, eggs, etc., for under $18. The actual cost to make one pie came out to be only $7.68. (You'll have plenty of everything but cottage cheese left over.)
I baked it at 340 for an hour, and had to go another 10 minutes, so I'll try 350 next time. The pie will rise up above the crust a bit , but goes back down when you take it out to cool.
The ingredients list comes from the early 1970s, when they had 10-inch pie crusts. Today, they're all 9-inch, so you might have some left over when you fill the pie shell. I used a "deep dish" pie shell, and it all fit in.
This pie is very different from what we call "cheesecake" these days. It's lighter and has the flavor of a custard -- not quite vanilla custard, not quite cheesecake. Something really unique and wonderful, handed down over the generations
Somewhere, my grandmother is smiling.
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