Coconut Cheesecake

Rose introduces her Coconut Cheesecake with the rhetorical question, "If you like coconut and you like cheesecake..."  The answer is YES on both counts.  This recipe alone makes her newest book "Rose's Heavenly Cakes", a gem.

My husband, on the other hand, is coconut phobic.  Detests coconut.  Abhors coconut.  As much as beets.

Which is to say, a lot.  So when he asked if I would make a pineapple upside down cake for Father's Day, I nonchalantly replied that cheesecake was next up for the Heavenly Cake Bakers.   Luckily, he likes cheesecake.

I may have forgotten to mention it was a coconut cheesecake.  I may have orchestrated the assembling of said cheesecake like a covert operation.  I may, or may not, have outright lied when asked "Is that bag of coconut I saw somewhere in this kitchen going into that cheesecake?"  Spouses are protected by law from testifying against each other, are they not?  

Coconut haters seem to fall into two camps; those that hate everything about it and those that object to the texture.  He falls into the latter.  The delectable vanilla wafer crust called for coconut.  Guilt set in so I made two versions, one with coconut and one without, even though I was fairly certain I could get away with it after pulverizing the coconut in the mini Cuisinart.

Spooned into ramekins, they baked nicely in a water bath.  I am always particularly pleased to evade a trip to the ER when executing a bain marie.

                                            Espresso tamper works perfectly

Toasted coconut was sprinkled on some and Miss Thompson's Dark Chocolate frosting drizzled on others in the spirit of Almond Joy candy bars.  The majority of the lot are heading out the door tomorrow because I could happily eat cheesecake morning, noon and night.

His verdict, "These are too good to be believed!"  I am not so certain his cardiologist would agree.  Then again, coconut does have certain health benefits which must outweigh the effects of sour cream and cream cheese.  Ya, that is why I poured coconut cream into the batter.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

But the really funny outcome is my husband's realization that he likes coconut flavor as well as, toasted coconut.  So this lifelong coconut aversion has been reduced to only raw coconut, if it is detectable, and not masked under something delectable like vanilla wafer cookie crust.  The same thing happened with other fervently avowed coconut detesters.

My daughter humored me with the following office update-

Fabian:  “Please tell your mom that this is the best dessert I’ve ever had”

Paul:  “This is great!”

Nikki:  “And I don’t even like coconut”

Max:  “Absolutely fabulous”

I walked into the breakroom and there were 10 people eating out of ramekins