Tuesday: The Cornucopia: Cheesecake

Although I am not a huge chocolate fan, I absolutely love cheesecake, and I especially love citrus flavors in a dessert like this (Key Lime pie, for example). Well, this weekend, I cashed in a chit for a homemade, custom-baked cheesecake that I won in a silent auction and took it to my book club meeting to share. My friend Jim was the baker, and he went above and beyond the call of duty in preparing this fabulous cheesecake. Here's a photo of it before we dug in:

(By the way, Jim is available for hire as your personal baker the next time you need a homemade dessert for a party, potluck, or whatever. Contact me if you live in the Fort Collins area and I'll hook you up.)

The cheesecake tasted as good as it looked. The main "filling" was flavored lightly with lemon, there was what I considered a lemon curd-type topping on that, and the crust was ginger snap cookie crumbs. If you haven't tried lemon and ginger as a flavor combination before, you must! I have all kinds of ideas for how I can re-vamp some old lemon recipes with the addition of some ginger.

On that note, to close, here's a really easy idea the next time you are asked to bring something to a potluck. Buy some candied ginger pieces and dip them (half-way) in melted semi-sweet chocolate chips. Arrange on a plate with some mint sprigs. You're done! A tiny bit of ginger packs a powerful punch, so this plate should not be overflowing. (BTW--this is also an easy  culinary gift--vs. the time and effort of baking cookies--at holiday time.)