Happy Cheesecake Day!

It’s Friday, so let’s talk food.

It is National Cheesecake Day, so let’s talk cheesecake.

There are many varieties of cheesecake, including baked and unbaked versions as well as regional variations. These include:

• New York-style cheesecake relies upon heavy cream. Usually, cheesecake is made from cream cheese, eggs and egg yolks to add a richness and a smooth consistency. It is baked in a special 13–15 cm (5–6 inches) tall springform pan in many restaurants. Some recipes use cottage cheese and lemon for distinct texture and flavor or add a drizzle of chocolate or strawberry sauce to the basic recipe.

• Sour cream-style uses sour cream instead of heavy cream. This makes the cheesecake more resilient to freezing and is the method by which most frozen cheesecakes are made.

• Pennsylvania Dutch-style cheesecake uses a slightly tangy type of cheese with larger curds and less water content, called pot or farmer's cheese.

• Philadelphia-style cheesecake is lighter in texture, yet richer in flavor than New York-style cheesecake. In the United States July 30 has been unofficially declared National Cheesecake Day.[7] The origins of this unofficial holiday are unknown but in the last few years it has gained in popularity as food blogs have embraced it and The Cheesecake Factory has taken advantage of it to promote its namesake product.

(Thanks Wikipedia!) According to Wikipedia, cheesecake is defined as a dessert with a topping made with soft cheese on a base of “biscuit, pastry, or sponge”. The use of the terms “topping” and “base” remind me of a particularly lively debate that broke out about this time last year regarding the classification of cheesecake as a pie.

Charlottesville is a pie town and with a love of everything pie. Aside from some friendly competitive smack talk about who makes the best pie, the only note of discord I recall had to do with whether someone could enter a cheesecake in the pie competition.

Pie is crust with filling in infinite variations, but is cheesecake pie? It has a crust. It could have a filling similar in texture to key lime pie. Opposition to this classification was fierce. What do you think? Is cheesecake pie?

Since many of us are counting down the hours until Happy Hour, I’ve got a couple of fun variations for you: Margarita Cheesecake and Pina Colada Cheesecake. Oh yeah.

I came across this tasty looking Margarita Cheesecake on http://www.marthastewart.com/. Instead of the usual graham cracker crust, she makes the crust for this lime and triple sec flavored filling with pretzels. The perfect Margarita is a little sweet, a little sour and a little salty and this recipe looks to fit the bill perfectly.

I’m not a cheesecake master, but one of the best things I have ever made was a Pina Colada cheesecake. I made it for the first time to celebrate my sister earning her master’s degree. Even my mother who neither likes cheesecake (nor sweets at all for that matter) was suitably impressed. If my mother is impressed it has to be good!

Again, the crust is a big reason I love this cheesecake. It is made with shortbread cookies and toasted coconut. I also grilled the pineapple for the topping which was well worth the extra effort. (I will share my recipe if you leave a comment below.)

Happy Friday!