A New Use for Goat Cheese

I added a springform pan to my bakeware arsenal this past weekend. What better way to inaugurate it than to make a cheesecake, and an unconventional one at that? A love of goat cheese and cranberries inspired the latest dessert to emerge from my kitchen. The recipe was begging to be tried for several reasons:

• The from-scratch crust requires a food processor. Is there a new food processor currently sitting in my kitchen? Yes!
• You get to candy your own orange peel. I am now slightly more experienced in making garnishes; also, why not apply this skill toward making orange chocolate in the future?
• The cranberries become an enticing drizzle when coated in warm honey. I’ve wanted to use some Napa Valley honey, obtained in October 2009’s California trip, for a few months, and here was my chance. My cranberry love goes without saying.
• Goat cheese in a dessert – need I say more?

Here's the finished cake, along with the orange and cranberry garnishes. Highlights of the production process include making the sugared and spiced graham cracker crust, something I have always enjoyed eating yet have not made until now; mixing turbinado sugar in the cake over granulated sugar, with the goal of giving the cake a grainier sweetness; peeling oranges with a vegetable peeler and sauteeing the julienned peel in melted sugar; and removing the pan's side after refrigerating the cake overnight – yes, it actually worked!

Most of the resulting tastes and textures were unexpected. The cheesecake itself looked runny, but it held its shape. It then melted instantly on my tongue. This strange state did not last – the cake has dried out since its weekend baking, and its texture and firmness have come to approximate "regular" cheesecake. The goat cheese flavor was not very distinct, with the finished product resembling ricotta cheese and cannoli filling more than the cheese I used. The turbinado sugar initially added graininess to the cake, but that roughness disappeared as the granules dissolved in the days post-mixing. Both versions of raw-sugar sweetness were enjoyable. The candied orange peel looked great on the cake, and it was pleasantly tangy for the first few chews – however, after that, the innate bitterness of the peel revealed itself. I don't know if we should have peeled thinner swaths of zest, or if the julienned strips should have been boiled longer. Either way, I was disappointed in this garnish and would like to improve or refine the process going forward. The honeyed cranberries were a delight, and were the one outcome of this recipe that tasted as I had expected. The extreme sweetness and tartness was perfect with the cheesecake, whose flavor profile sat squarely between those extremes.

This dessert gets a high score for creativity, though I plan on exploring traditional cheesecakes with my newly-initiated springform before I return to the goats' pen.