Making cheescake in France

[Dave Hatfield]

I was sure that I had started a discussion on what cheese one could find in France to use when making cheesecake, but I can't find it even though I've searched diligently.

In any case I got a good answer from Pti. Use Kiri since Philadelphia is difficult to find outside of Paris. I tried that and it worked perfectly. Only problem was that it seemed to take forever to open all of those small packets of Kiri. I've never seen Kiri packed in anything except those small wrapped morsels.

Yesterday I tried a new tack. I went to our little Friday market and bought 4, 100 gram blocks of a very young local chevre. These worked perfectly! This was an uncooked cheesecake, lemon in this case, so I added a packet of powdered gelatin to the lemon juice and heated this until it dissolved. A cookie crust was baked, the chevre mixture went in and then it rested in the fridge for several hours. Due to my diet I used Splenda instead of real sugar.

The result was great. Our guests loved it. The only thing I would change for next time is that I would add more gelatin. I thought the cheesecake was just a bit softer that I would have liked.

We live & learn.