I had to master the cheesecake— my honor as a normal Jewish woman depended on it

I don’t make cheesecake.

And I’m gonna blame my mother a little bit for this one. She didn’t make cheesecake when I was growing up. I stress when I was growing up because she used to make cheesecake — and a lot of other patchkehs too — but by the time I came around, she was done doing things she didn’t like to do, and she doesn’t like cheesecake (or knaidlach), so she didn’t make them. For the record, I love cheesecake but don’t eat it that often cuz, calories.

Every year we’d learn in school about cheesecake and flowers as if it were Torah MiSinai, and there was nary a slice to be found in my house. The closest we ever got to cheesecake was cheese snacks on Pesach. Do they still make them? I loved that stuff.

Then I got married, and two things happened:

My husband believes in cheesecake and flowers.

The magazines that weren’t around when I was growing up were making headway into Jewish life and culture and I learned a new word: Tablescape.

Cue the inadequacy. And so started my cheesecake odyssey.