The Bug and I Bake Abby Dodge’s Luscious Meyer Lemon Cheesecake for #Baketogether

When I was a young girl, lemon cheesecake was my birthday cake of choice. Having a summer birthday in a city with sticky, sometimes oppressively hot summers, meant it was a herculean effort on my mother’s part to grant my birthday cake wish. But, she often shrugged off the heat, turned up the air conditioning, and baked my favorite cake for me. I adored the refreshing tangy lemon flavor, the creamy and fluffy filling, and what I really lived for was the graham cracker crust. Buttery, crunchy, grainy and sweet –I loved everything about it, and still do. When Abby Dodge, doyenne of the monthly baking group #Baketogether, announced that February was cheesecake month, I was elated. The Bug was game for the baking challenge, too.

Abby suggests #Baketogether participants use her recipe as a starting point, and she encourages improvisation from every angle — crust, filling and topping. The recipe she posted, an exotic vanilla beauty, looked sumptuous; creamy and rich, but feathery light. I’m drawn to vanilla-flavored anything; I find it difficult to resist the intoxicating aroma. I was tempted to make the recipe as is, without any creative flourishes, but we’re happily awash in Meyer Lemons from multiple sources. Abby included a link in her post to a lemony cheesecake recipe she had written for Fine Cooking; the ingredients were slightly different, but the flavor combination was right up my alley. So, we combined lots of Meyer lemon zest — evoking the flavor of birthday cakes of my youth — with the tropical, smooth taste of vanilla.

Cheesecake isn’t difficult to make, and a few tips from Abby make the difference: the cream cheese, sour cream and eggs all should be at room temperature, lest unsightly lumps develop during mixing. Once the eggs are added, the batter should be beaten minimally, to avoid bubbles that can settle on top and cracks that can develop while cooling. The cake should be a touch wiggly in the center when you slide it out of the oven. If you keep those pointers in mind, then prepare for a cake that’s velvety in texture; an indulgent dessert experience if there ever was one.

The cake comes together in a straightforward manner. The Bug and I split the tasks, as we did when we baked Peasant Boule last month. She measured the graham cracker crumbs for the crust,

took the lead on pressing the buttery-crumb mixture into the springform pan,

and while the crust baked in the oven, she zested lemons into the sugar before rubbing the two together to infuse the sugar with the lemony flavor.

I whipped up the silky filling in the stand-up mixer, poured it into the springform pan and kept a close watch as it baked for a little over an hour. It spent Saturday night in the fridge to firm up. On Sunday, we made a quick batch of lemon curd and spread some of it over the top of the chilled cake, and then sifted a bit of confectioners sugar on the top to give the cake a festive feel. We served it with fresh blueberries from the Farmer’s Market. (There are a number of lemon curd recipes available online; here’s one that Cathy Barrow recommends. I use Dorie Greenspan’s recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours and add lemon zest to pump up the lemon flavor even more.)

The Bug and I are eager to hear what’s next for #Baketogether in March. In the meantime, we have more cake to devour.

You may find Abby’s post here, and  I’ve included her recipe below with a few modifications.