Lemon Goat Cheese Cake

Originally, the goal for this post was to prepare one of the drinks that Mario has in the beginning of the cookbook (yes there is a whole section on mixed drinks) that used blood orange juice as an ingredient. I, however, missed blood orange juice season by nearly a week and was quite disappointed when I saw the empty spot on the shelf at Whole Foods. But no worries though, I chose something else to make instead. 

I found myself having some family over in the beginning of the week for a grilled dinner. I wanted to make something for dessert out of the book. Now I could've played it safe and went for either one of the cookie recipes or perhaps the olive oil cake (which I will be making soon), but I decided to test not only their dessert boundaries but mine as well. Hence, I chose this dessert, the lemon goat cheese cake. 

Now even on a good day, goat cheese is a really hard sell for me. So you will have to understand why my guests and I balked at the sound of this dessert. But one of the things that I like about this project is that I constantly find myself trying new ingredients or new combinations. It's something that I encourage you all at home to try with any one of your cookbooks. I'm sure many of you out there in home-cooking-land have at least several cookbooks in your house that you have cherry picked recipes from that are well inside of your comfort zone. So I propose that every once in a while we step out of our comfort zone and make something that we normally wouldn't ever try. There's a good chance that you might just like it and you would be asked to make it again. So here goes. 

I start by heating my oven to 325° and I spray my springform pan with non stick cooking spray and coat the bottom and sides with sugar. 

Next, I take out my kitchen aid mixer (one of my favorite tools) and beat some egg yolks (making sure to reserve the egg whites) and sugar until pale. 

Once there, I slowly mix in some of the goat cheese. 

Then, I add rum, flour, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and salt and mix until creamy. 

I then took the egg whites and whisked them with a pinch of salt until it started to foam. After it foamed, I added sugar and kept whisking until it reached the soft-peak meringue stage. By the way, having an electric mixer makes this part effortless. Otherwise, it would be a good arm workout. 

The whipped egg whites then get carefully folded into the cheese mixture. 

The spring form pan goes into a baking dish large enough to hold it so that hot water can be added, coming halfway up the side of the springform pan. The cheesecake mixture gets put into the spring form pan. 

The whole thing gets wrapped in foil and put in the oven for about 35 minutes. Then the foil gets removed and the cheesecake continues to cook for about another 10 minutes or until set. 

Once finished cooking, the cheesecake goes in the fridge to cool completely. 

This cheesecake comes with a lemon syrup glaze that Mario describes in the recipe notes as so tasty that it 'would make gym shoes taste delicious.' To make it, I just boiled lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan until reduced and thickened. It gets set aside and cooled when finished. 

I'm now anxiously waiting to plate this thing because I know what's coming next...I get to try it. I removed the sides of the cake pan, pour the lemon glaze on top, and garnish with fresh raspberries. I had some leftover glaze and saved it for the individual plates. 

It looked beautiful. But it was goat cheese after all. So let's see what the official tasting standings were:

Wife: Didn't like it

Sister-in-law: Spit it out

Mother-in-law: Liked it

Father-in-law: Loved the glaze, not too keen on the cheesecake

Me: Liked it, but not enough to make it again

I really do have to give my family props for trying such a funky dessert. I promise I won't put them through that again. Overall, if you really like goats cheese, then you'll probably love this dessert. It's luxurious, sweet, and pretty. But if you're used to traditional cheesecake, then you'll probably hate it. Not to mention that with the amount of goats cheese you'll need to make this recipe, it can get quite pricey to make. The maple cheesecake from my first month of posts was received much better. 

I'm really going to keep plugging away at this and try to get more recipes knocked out this month. It should be an uneventful week so let's see what else I can make. Until next time...