JUST LIKE GRANDMA USED TO MAKE IT

A while ago I received a phone call from my daughter asking for my recipe for cheese cake.  Although it neither ‘my’ recipe, nor is it actually ‘cheesecake’, I knew what she was talking about and went to dig out the recipe book it’s in.  It’s been a while since I’ve made that dessert so it took me a bit of a search.  I have a full shelf of old-fashioned, spill-stained, dog-eared, beat-up recipe books and could only remember the one I was looking for was a local fundraiser project I had inherited from my grandmother’s belongings.  I had the idea it was the one the Redvers Lodge of the O.O.R.P. put together in 1967 but that’s the one that the banana bread recipe is in.  Turns out the PHILADELPHIA CREAM CHEESE CAKE is in ‘Kitchen Kapers’, a book compiled by the Golden Age Center back when their address was where The Optimist Café is now. 

Obviously my recipe book shelf is a historical reference site.

Anyway, back to my daughter and her request.  Her son had chosen grandma’s cherry cheesecake for his birthday cake.  Of course he thought that meant it was my cake but we need to go back at least one more generation to get to the rightful grandmother and yet another generation to the original owner of the recipe book.  I know my mom used this recipe because it’s her writing that says the cup of icing sugar is too much - the first modification in it’s journey to 2025.

To begin with I was going to just snap a picture of the page and text it to the cake baker but thought the better of it when I realized the deletion of icing sugar was only the beginning of the alterations.  I have tweaked it a few times myself.

I don’t use a whole box of graham crumbs – that’s way too much.  I use 2/3rds of a box and then and let the rest go stale in my cupboard. 

The ½ cup of melted butter is actually margarine. 

The 8 oz package of cream cheese is accurate, but the womenfolk in our family use real whipping cream – Dream Whip just seems wrong for people who grew up on a dairy farm. 

As far as the can of cheery pie filling goes, I never feel that one can is enough but two is definitely too much.  I know this because I tried it; who knew too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing?  Using only 1 ½ cans of cherries would have a ½ can going bad in my fridge and that seems like more of a waste that a 1/3 box of graham crumbs so I settled on just the single can.

I suppose, if I got all thrifty and technical I could use a bigger pan, all of the graham crumbs, and two full cans of cherries but then I would need more margarine, cream cheese and whipping cream … I can’t remember which (or how many) of my teachers told my sceptical younger self that I would need math and fractions in my adult life, but here we are.  In the end, for practical purposes I choose not to build a bigger cheesecake.  It would only result in a cake that wouldn’t fit in my fridge, and eventually to me not fitting through doors.  Best to leave that part of the recipe unaltered.

It's funny; when I looked over the list of ingredients and the method to put them together it was obvious that sending the next generation a copy of what my book said would be totally misleading.  The words printed on that page are more of a list of suggestions than actual instructions.  Each line is reminder of what has been changed and sometimes a note to show who changed it. 

Besides, I knew she would be writing down what I gave her in her own notebook.  You know, the one she’ll go find when her daughter calls her someday for Grandma’s cheesecake recipe.  I wonder what it will look like by then?