The search for the perfect cheesecake

Shavuot 5785

Two weeks before Shavuot, chef and cookbook author Jamie Geller, who is now the spokesperson of Aish HaTorah, set out with her team — including the writer of this article — to taste and rate some of the best cheesecakes in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem has a plethora of bakeries, each with its own style of cheesecake presentation.

“We aimed to sample as wide a variety of different kinds of cheesecakes as we could in one morning,” said Geller, who helps curate Jewlish, a Jewish food website named after one of her books.

“Shavuot is my favorite holiday,” Geller says. “Even though all dairy commemorates the tradition, Shavuot has become known as the cheesecake holiday. This is the only time that I reflect on my time in America and fondly remember having a two-day holiday, a full 48 hours, to indulge in cheesecake and all things dairy.”

In modern times, cheesecake has become entwined with celebrating Shavuot, a tradition for which many reasons are given. The most prominent of these is that Jews were given culinary (kashrut) laws regarding the proper treatment of meat at Mount Sinai on Shabbat and were forbidden from slaughtering or cooking meat that day, so instead they ate dairy.

Another reason is that Mount Sinai is called Har Gavnunim (Mountain of Peaks) and its Hebrew etymology is close to the Hebrew word for cheese — gvina.

A third reason is that by eating dairy products, we give thanks to G-d for giving the Jews the land of milk and honey.

Ahead of the cheesecake crawl, Geller described her ideal cheesecake: “To me, the perfect cheesecake is New York-style — creamy, semi-rich, a bit savory and full-bodied. It’s a mile high with a small token layer of crust on the bottom.”

She adds, with a smile, “Cheesecake can also be classified as a protein, so I get to indulge with no guilt on this holiday. The rest of the holidays, aside from Chanukah, we’re pretty much rolling in meat and potatoes.”

The first stop saw the team visit Marzipan Bakery on Agrippas St., mostly known for its melt-in-your-mouth rugelach. The bakery also had a wide variety of frozen cheesecakes available.

Geller’s team chose the typical Israeli “crumb” cheesecake after discussing with the staff what its top recommendation would be.

“Growing up, my Israeli Aunt Zehava used to make this style of cheesecake with crumbs, it took me back a bit to that memory,” Geller says.

Overall, the team determined that the cheesecake was well-rounded and creamy, with a lemon undertone.

It was a solid cheesecake and received a respectable 7 out of 10 from the 6 tasters who judged it based on composition, taste, heaviness or lightness of cheese and how well the crust complements the cheese.

The next stop was Berman Bakery, also on Agrippas St. There, the team sampled a cheese log that was labeled “baked cheesecake.”

“This was more of a cake than a cheesecake,” the team determined. “It wasn’t what we were looking for today.”

Next came the Oreo cheesecake from English Cake, across Agrippas from the Machane Yehuda shuk (outdoor market). This cake was really exciting; its appearance enthralled some of the team members, but they said that the cheese was more of a gelatinous cream than a typical cheese. The cake was rated a 6 out of 10.

Following that, the crew stepped into Boutique Central, where they tried a classic New York-style cheesecake.

“This was terrific,” one of the team tasters exclaimed. “It has everything I was looking for, a full-bodied cheese, a light crust that complemented the entirety of the cake, and a second layer of creamy cheese on top.” The overall score for this cheesecake was 8.5 out of 10.

Leaving the shuk area, the team headed to King George St. to sample two cheesecakes from the French-style patisserie, Yehuda Bakery. One was a pecan cheesecake, the other caramel-topped.

The pecan headed toward a more gelatinous consistency with nut flavoring diffusing into it, while the caramel held a stronger cheese body and more varied flavor. The overall scores given by their team were 6 for the pecan and 7 for the caramel.

From there, the group headed down to Yoel Solomon St. to sample Napoleon Patisserie’s lotus cheesecake. It came in a small circular torte-like shape that, the team determined, was full of cheesecake flavor.

“This is a 10!” Geller recalls after tasting just the first bite of the lotus cheesecake, half-covered by lotus cookie-flavored crust and half by a delicious cream.

“This is a little piece of heaven. It is exactly what I hoped for and wish to have this Shavuot!”

The last stop on the crawl was Kadosh Café Patisserie. Here, the group faced a challenge: there was no cheesecake left!

After speaking with several staff members and explaining their mission, a waiter headed into the kitchen and found a single piece of Basque-style cheesecake in the back of a fridge.

As the team of tasters dug in, it became apparent that Kadosh, which has a reputation for serving delicious, tantalizing cakes, did not disappoint. The darkness of the Basque-style cheesecake was in full play, as was the full body of the cheese itself.

The piece of forgotten cheesecake ranked at a lofty 8.5. It left the team wondering how good it would have been if it were fresh out of the oven.

“The inspiration for the cheesecake crawl came about as a culmination of several different factors,” Geller says.

“We were looking for a team-building experience themed around the holiday that could also be used as a cool piece of social media content that will help other people celebrate the holiday.

“As we were sitting around eating the different cheesecakes, we went around the table and discussed different reasons for the tradition of why we eat cheesecake and dairy on the holiday of Shavuot. “We did some research, we learned about the holiday and about cheesecakes in Jerusalem. It was a win-win on many levels.”