This is an ancient draft post from way back before I started culinary school. I never got around to finishing it. Here it is…
Every now and then even the most experienced cooks and bakers fail.
This was one of those times.
“What the hell is THAT!?” you say…
That was a cheesecake failure, and while there was no dessert that day, the occasional failure keeps me humble. This cheesecake has been dubbed “The Turd Cheesecake” it wasn’t supposed to come out like that, I assure you. So what happened? Well, I was experimenting with flavors, and wanted to make a passion fruit cheesecake with some blackcurrant swirls, for the base I was going to use Stella D’oro ‘Margarite’ cookies, but the store was out of them, in their place I opted for some lady fingers that I’d not used before, these ones had a fine sugar coating on them, and that’s what caused the problem. During baking the cookies should have absorbed some of the batter and made a nice base, not too hard, not too soft. The sugar coating prevented that absorption, and during the course of baking they floated to the top, where they caramelized, thus giving us the look of floating turds on top of a cheesecake. I learned to a) not use strange cookies and go to another store. b) sugar coated cookies don’t work.
There you have it, the epic baking fail.