The next morning, he tells me, “Mommy, guess what I’m thinking about?”

I couldn’t guess.

“CHEESECAKE!”

“When’s Shavuos?” my son started asking regularly.

“A long time,” I answer.

“Show me on the calendar.”

I did.

“When are you making cheesecake?”

Ummm — that assumes a lot, kid. I fumfered my way out of that one. But then he flipped through my cookbooks and chanced upon the cheesecakes: piped roses, shaved chocolate, oozing caramel.

“Let’s make that, Mommy!”

I glanced down.

“I don’t have the ingredients,” I said.

Wrong answer. The right one: I don’t make cheesecake. Because now he fixated on the ingredients. For the next two weeks I heard:

“What do you need?”

“When are you buying it?”

“Wait, make this one, not that one.”

“Mommy, I’m dreaming of cheesecake.”

One morning, he examined my cookbooks, pointed, and said, “This one.”

He’d chosen the cheesecake of cheesecakes; three layers, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate, with a crumb bottom, and a caramel topping.

As I shopped for the ingredients, my mind kept going, Esther, you’re not REALLY doing this, are you??

The total was $52.29. I could’ve bought a nice cheesecake.

“Did you buy the farmer cheese?” my son asked the moment he came home on Thursday.

I nodded.

“Hooray! Let’s make cheesecake.”

I pushed him off to Sunday, ‘cuz hello, Shabbos.

On Friday, I realized I didn’t have a dairy springform pan. I hesitated, but as Macbeth said, “I’m in blood stepp’d in so far….” I ordered the springform pan for $17.

Sunday, 5:00 a.m.

“It’s cheesecake day!” my son whispered in my ear.

Thank G-d we both went back to sleep after that joyous proclamation.

I went to toivel my new pan while he was in school, and when I got home, I finally read through the directions. Oh tzaddik, why this cake? It had 13 distinct steps.

Oh, and I don’t have a milchig oven, so I had to scrub and burn out my oven.

“It’s cheesecake time!” My son proclaimed when he came home from school.

Yes, it was. He put in eggs, held the immersion blender, flattened the crumb base, poured one layer. We had to freeze each layer for two hours — oh, the potchke.

It was late when the final layer was finally set. I read the instructions: “Bake for 90 minutes, and then cool for 90 minutes.”

We wrapped it in foil, immersed it in a water bath, and set the timer….

Now it’s cooling on the cooler before I add the topping. I’m in awe. Not of my son’s persistence; he’s a clichéd youngest.

But I’m kinda in awe of myself. There are so many things that are immediate nos for me. I’m lazy; I can’t be bothered; I just don’t want to stretch myself. But making a cheesecake with my son, for my son, every 13 steps of the way — maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am. Or maybe two days and $75 is a small price for love. Either way, I get to have my cheesecake and eat it, too.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 945)