The Problem With Grandma’s Cookbook… No Cheesecake Factory Restaurant Recipes! -- Cheesecake Factory Restaurant Recipes

Do you have a copy of Grandma’s cookbook? Or Mom’s? I’m no cook, but I have a photocopy of Grandma’s cookbook anyway. It has a few extra recipes from Mom, as well as some additional notes. Like all old family cookbooks, it has these three problems:

• The ink is faded, so the recipes are difficult to read.
• Many recipes are incomplete – meant to be notes and reminders. How to cook the actual recipe is handed down from Mother to Daughter. As a practical matter, Mom only remembers about two dozen of these recipes clearly.
• Not much in the way of desserts. Most of the dessert recipes are limited to jellies and sherbet. I’ve seen some old cookbooks with recipes for brownies and various cookies, but never have I seen a family cookbook with my favorite dessert – cheesecake!

This makes it pretty tough when you need to plan the menu for a dinner party, especially when your guests have eaten at your table in the past. Cooking the same old dessert again doesn’t seem to be an acceptable solution. Almost everyone seemed to serve some form of jelly or brownies at their dinner parties. Mom used to subscribe to cooking magazines, and their recipes were alright for family dinners. Unfortunately, all of Mom’s friends and our neighbors bought the same magazines, so she still had the same headache when she needed to invite guests over to the house. If you wanted to be different, you needed to buy your desserts from the bakery. Or serve ice cream. Kids never complain about ice cream!

Luckily, we live in the Information Age now. We can find almost anything on the Internet, even cheesecake recipes, if we only know where to look. What type of cheesecake do you like best for dessert:

• American – New York Jewish style (most popular recipe, baked by most restaurants), sour cream (2nd most popular, baked by most factories), Chicago, Pennsylvania Dutch, Philadelphia, farmer’s cheese, country style
• British – biscuit base, usually served chilled
• Italian
• French – light
• Greek – uses cheese made from sheep’s milk
• Swedish – served warm with jam, whipped cream or ice cream
• German – slightly sweet and sour, melts in your mouth
• Dutch/Belgian – flavored with melted bittersweet chocolate
• Brazilian

You can google the recipes for any of these cheesecakes. If you patiently look through the results, you should be able to find a few good recipes for each type of cheesecake.

But why bother? Cheesecakes are a very popular dessert. Other people have already collected the recipes together and published them. There are even people who have worked out the 50 Cheesecake Factory cheesecake recipes. Are they really the exact same Cheesecake Factory restaurant recipes? I honestly have no idea. But I’m not a gourmet – to me, they taste the same, or close enough that there is no difference.

The greatest point about these Cheesecake Factory restaurant recipes is their step-by-step instructions. No more squinting at faded ink. No more incomplete recipes. Every ingredient, every step, is there in black and white. Even I can make my own cheesecakes.

Click here for your secret Cheesecake Factory Restaurant recipes.