Yeah, that’s a thing.
This one did take me two months to complete for two reasons.
One, goat cheese is EXPENSIVE! A normal cheesecake will cost me about $5 in cream cheese (less if it is on sale). The same amount of comparable cream cheese was $18. Since I’m trying to live on a budget, I ran out of money in May, so I put it off a month. [Note: I have been informed that I may have inadvertently found the most expensive place in the Twin Cities to get goat cheese. Oops.]
Second, trying to find out a recipe on how to do it. It turns out, most recipes that are goat cheese substitute a third to a half of normal cream cheese for goat cheese. That’s okay most times, but I was making this cheesecake with a friend of mine who can’t have cow’s milk or cheese.
I spent a lot of time looking at recipes, trying to figure out how this might work. In the end I just used my normal New York vanilla cheesecake recipe, augmenting for taste (and removing the sour cream topping, which in a jalapeno cheesecake is normally flavored with sriracha or tobacco).
So how did it turn out?
First, it is edible, which is the basic requirement of anything from the kitchen.
The overall taste is not as sweet as a regular cheesecake. The texture is different, more granular and maybe a little tart. I did taste tests before I stuck it in the oven, but I guess I’m just that unused to goat cheese.
In addition, I am not a huge fan of the jalapeno cheesecake; as I said, I was making this with a specific friend in mind, and I hope he likes it. For me, I avoided the jalapeno and tried to stick with the regular sections of the cake.
On the plus side, a friend of mine (not the one I had in mind) did demolish a decent chunk of the cake. She did like it, and agreed it did taste different.
If I can find a cheaper source of goat cheese, I will definitely experiment more often. But at least I can continue my streak: I have yet to make an inedible cheesecake.
12for12challenge 