Gateau de Fromage Américain

Cheesecake.
Drool.
I know but one person (Yvonne Hu) who wouldn't sell their uterus to a dragon to have a slice of homemade genuine (pronounced jen-u-EYE-n) cheesecake drizzled with chocolate and fresh ruby red strawberries. For those of you who have considered the latter bargain and have decided that you would rather keep your uterus, relax, this was just an exaggerated analogy to prove a point.
What point, you ask?
That cheesecake is really damn good.
I'm pretty sure I've already written a post about the damn good-edness of cheesecake, but see, it's so darn good that it deserves two posts. Perhaps three, if I gather up the patience to make another in the future.

[As a side note, I typed in "putain" into the online translator and it came out as "damn." It would seem like as often as the French use this abused word, that "damn" is a good equivalent, but I'm still convinced that everytime they say "putain," they're calling something a "whore"]

Though a daunting 6-12 hour task making the perfect cheesecake turns out to be, the end product is always worth it. I wanted to share true damn goodness with my French coworkers. I just couldn't call myself an American (who lives in one of the 50 states) if I didn't introduce them to it!

Now, don't get me wrong. They have cheesecake in France, but not real cheesecake made with real Philadelphia cream cheese. Reason being? They don't have real Philadelphia cream cheese here. That makes sense, because they don't have Philadelphia here, but hey, I can get Philadelphia cream cheese in North Dakota, so that's no reason, FRANCE! Geez. Determined to find a substitute within the culinary capital of the world (additionally probably the only country with 5 aisles dedicated to dairy in their grocery stores), I stumbled upon a product called "Kiri," which you might have seen me write about in my "Cinq par semaine" post. They're pretty much lighter versions of cream cheese packaged in cubes. Like Babybel/Laughing Cow mixed with Cream cheese. That's Kiri. It's called "fromage du lait" which basically means "milk cheese" and though it has mostly the flavor of cream cheese, the texture is much much lighter and the taste is more subtle.

I finished the cheesecake Friday afternoon and came back Saturday morning with George to decorate it. It needed a night to cool off.

Whipping up some dark chocolate ganache in my heels. Hahaha. . .
While George licks the spatula.

So now for the interesting part: the verdict?
Est-ce que les français pensent vraiment que le "cheesecake" est bon?

When I would ask them if they had ever heard about cheesecake they would give me a strange look, cock their heads, and say, "why the heck would you put cheese in a cake?" To which I would shake my head in pity. Of course the French are eager to critique that which is foreign to them (and believe me this is not an exaggeration), they also like to think that what they do and produce is the best out there.

Although I was very happy with my cheesecake and George was orgasming next to me while devouring the slice we shared, Bérenger was standing by saying what I should have done to improve the cake. (Yep, and I came back Monday with the cake gone . . . all but one piece. Berenger had taken it!)

Eh. I know the French are prideful, but come on, who can resist a slice of cheesecake?
Or in Béranger's case, the entire cheesecake?