My Valentine's Cheesecake


I think Valentine's Day is one of my favorite "holidays". I don't know if it actually qualifies as a holiday, since no one gets the day off, and it seems to me to be largely a Hallmark-marketing-ploy to make us buy things. BUT I think the idea of having a holiday around the idea of loving other people is a great one!

Plus, red and pink hearts are so pretty, you know? And who doesn't need a reason to buy chocolate? :)

I decided, in honor of Valentine's Day, to attempt to make a cheesecake for the first time in my life, after seeing adorable heart-shaped raspberry cheesecakes in a magazine. Josh's favorite dessert is cheesecake, and I was in a cutesy mood and wanted to show my devotion to him. Note to self: Don't try something just because it's adorable. Read the directions first to ascertain the difficulty before plunging in on some unknown voyage.

Between making it, baking it, cooling it, chilling it, and cutting it into the cutesy heart shapes, I was involved in this project almost all day! To make the raspberry marbled effect, you had to puree frozen raspberries, and then push them through a fine-mesh sieve. The only thing I know about a sieve is how to spell it. Own one? Hardly. The best I could come up with was a collander which did a poor job of separating the teensy weensy seeds from the puree. That collander didn't even try!

After about an hour in the kitchen, I decided to just make the cheesecake with the raspberry seeds in. Let come what may! An hour in the kitchen with little progress will do that to you.

I'm happy to report that the cheesecake turned out great, though my hearts aren't nearly as neat and well-defined as the ones in the magazine photo. I'd probably make cheesecake again, but I'd read all the directions first, and it would have to be a day I could spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So in other words, not any time soon! :)
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!


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