subject: Toronto Mini Cheesecakes-cheese Cakes-best Cheesecakes In Toronto [print this page] Cheesecake holds a special place in my lifeCheesecake holds a special place in my life. As a matter of fact, the first culinary creation I ever made was a cheesecake. My brother loved cheesecake so when I was a small boy, my mom taught me to make one for my brother. To this day they still requests cheesecake from me for special occasions, & even for not so special occasions.
The primary ingredient in cheesecake is cream cheese. There is proof that cream cheese was made as far back as the Renaissance. When Marco Polo returned from his travels, they reported that the Mongols basically left skimmed milk out in the sun to dry or that buttermilk or skimmed milk was reduced by boiling & made in to a cheese, a procedure still in use today.
Both cream cheese & aged cheese were widely used by pastry cooks throughout the classic period, when made from full cream milk or milk where small of the cream had been skimmed off. There's plenty of recipes of this kind: Russian pashka, English & American cheesecake, Corsican cacavellu, fidone & chechiole, & the true cassata of Sicily. A drained cream cheese called turos was used by the Ancient Greeks 3000 years ago & was thought about fit for athletes in the Olympics; this cheese is called tiri by their modern descendants. The Romans also ate cream cheese prepared in the Greek fashion.
In the late nineteenth century, one New York dairy farmers developed a rich cheese, perhaps inspired by the Italian Neufchatel. This new high-fat cheese was developed for the Empire Cheese Company, & later became known as Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese.
