Beer Cheesecake, 1955 – A Vintage Recipe Test

Since last weekend was Father’s Day, I thought I would buy Tom a beer. And then put that beer in a cheesecake.

This is Beer Cheesecake!

AuthorRetroRuth

Rating

Now, if you have been following our social media (mostly Facebook), you would have noticed that this recipe is yet another hilarious & adventurous episode of Patreon-chosen recipes.

As you can see, this was more of a mystery of which one was going to be chosen that the Lima Marshmallow thing from a couple of weeks ago.  I actually had hope that Gingered Heavenly Hash would win, but it didn’t and now I have to add beer to a cheesecake. But that is ok. There is always hope for Gingered Heavenly Hash in the future. (If you want to make my dream come true, join Patreon and vote for the delicious recipes! Also – as soon as two more patrons join up, I can give all patrons access to my digital cookbook library!)

Now, back to the actual recipe. This recipe is from Mike Roy, who is most well-known for his radio show, “Mike Roy’s Cooking Thing”, which was a syndicated radio segment on CBS. He also was one of the first television cooking show hosts and hosted a longer radio cooking program on local Los Angeles radio called, “The Food News Hour”. He was a prolific cookbook writer, and wrote a dozen cookbooks in his lifetime. I was lucky enough to come across what looks to be a collection of newsletters containing recipes that were sent out to match one of his programs. And in this recipe bounty, I found Beer Cheesecake.

Now, I really, really wish that I could see or hear the show that went along with this recipe because I would love to hear the reasoning and process behind this recipe. Not because it completely off its rocker, because I have made beer desserts before that have been good, but just because I SIEVED A POUND OF CREAM CHEESE AND IT ENDED UP BEING A CHUNKY MESS ANYWAY.

It was suggested by one of the patrons who was following along with my ranty Patreon posts, that this wasn’t necessarily to make mixing easier, but because of the quality of the ingredients. For example, to eliminate lumps in the cream cheese. Which makes sense.

Another theory that I came up with after doing some brief internet research, is that it might just be a typo. It looks like cheesecake with beer in it is an Old English recipe. The recipe that I found online claiming to be Old English uses cottage cheese, not cream cheese. Perhaps it was supposed to be cream cottage cheese. Which makes far, far more sense.

But let’s just move on because, frankly, my hand hurts.

Eventually, I just gave up and used a hand mixer.  Because, as I said, my hand hurt.

I also might have drunk the rest of this beer.

Even though it didn’t say to do it in the recipe, I lightly stirred the beer in last, because my working theory was that the beer was meant to make the cheesecake light and fluffy. It filled the pan with fizzy wonder.

One hour and 15 minutes later, I had a finished cheesecake! It was actually very pretty.

Also, I used craisins instead of raisins because that is what I had, but they seemed to have sucked up a lot of the moisture. You can actually see the holes in the cheesecake where the craisins just sucked everything up.  I need to do some more research, but this might have been during the time period when everyone would just do a little cooking soak of any sort of dried fruit they used for baking, so no one mentioned it in the recipe because everyone just knew to do it.  So I might have screwed that up as well.

So, down two strikes. At this point, I should probably just give up before I get hate comments.

But even with all my errors, it was a good-looking cheesecake. And the time had come to see if it tasted good.

“That is not a good face, is it?”

“It’s not a bad face. It just isn’t very sweet. At all.”

The Verdict: Savory With A Little Sweet

From The Tasting Notes:

This cheesecake was basically savory. It tasted like a beer and dried cherry cheese dip that I had once at The Brass Cafe in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. So, straddling the sweet/savory border with it’s toes just very slightly over the savory side. It was very malty in a beer way, and then had a very strong lemon flavor. It also had a very eggy texture. It was smooth but reminded me a lot of a flan in texture. So, good, but more in a “cheese and fruit plate for dessert kind of way” than a “Cheesecake Factory” kind of way. It would be awesome for breakfast. Wait….how come everything keeps ending up as breakfast food for us lately? It’s concerning, but not so much that it’s going to stop me from eating this for breakfast tomorrow.

But because Tom is Tom, he figured out a way to make it a perfect dessert. All hail the power of whipped topping!

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