Meanwhile in Bonita Springs, Florida: Cheesecake-Palooza 2025
It started out simple enough. Novel, even. A few weeks ago, I decided I would make Jerry’s world-famous award-winning cheesecake (the one that won a pie baking contest). It is at this point, royalty. A cheesecake with medals deserves a grand introduction.
Last week, I hit the store with the recipe in hand and bought triple the ingredients. I planned to make not one, not two, but several cheesecakes, because we have two large springform pans and a whole collection of mini ones. I would spread cheesecake love far and wide. I even had the proper bakery boxes. This was going to be a professional operation. I calculated everything carefully and assumed, something one should never do, that I had all the equipment I needed. And I mostly did. Common sense, however, must have been in the only aisle I did not walk down at Publix.
What unfolded next reminded me of my move into this little 1950s bunker of a home. Long story short, I rented out my house to a family whose home took water during Hurricane Milton, why not? They needed a place, I was staying with Jerry. After he passed, I moved out so the house could be sold and I ended up here. My first week, I got hungry and thought I would make spaghetti... only to discover I did not own a pot big enough to boil it. So like a college freshman, I boiled full-length spaghetti in a nonstick skillet. The next day Amazon delivered a gorgeous pot set, but the trauma lingers.
Flash forward to cheesecake-palooza 2025. I discovered I had no mixer, so I ordered one. It was supposed to arrive the next day. It did not. It apparently went on a sightseeing tour of the lower 48 states before wandering home the day before Thanksgiving. A friend kindly dropped her mixer at the Bonita Springs Historical Society as backup, but mine finally arrived, so I thought I slid into home plate feeling victorious.
It was a foul ball. The mixer was small. It claimed to have three speeds, printed right on the dial, but all three were exactly the same speed. A cute orange color, though, because obviously accessorizing correctly is the priority here.
I changed out of my work dress and into thin pajamas because this house, built as a Cold War bomb shelter, retains heat like a clay oven. I set up stations for cheesecake number one and cheesecake number two. Jerry always mixed his in a stainless-steel pan with a handle, so I dug out a new one from the Amazon pot set and went old-school, just like Jer.
Time to prep the pans. Turns out, my parchment paper was too narrow. Issue number one. I overlapped pieces, put on black rubber cooking gloves, buttered the pan, scattered graham cracker crumbs and salvaged the situation. Score one for Team Griffith. I are smart.
The first ingredients went in and the mixer did its best. It was clearly on the struggle bus. Not a KitchenAid by any stretch. Three settings, all the same speed meant all hat, no cattle. I just prayed to get one cheesecake out of her.
Then the recipe called for a cup and a half of sugar. That is when I learned in real time I do not own a proper measuring cup or measuring spoons. I had a tiny cup I thought was a third cup but was actually a quarter. It is my official, designated oatmeal scooper. Fine. Six scoops. Moving on.
Cornstarch was next, a third cup. I could eyeball it, but one of the pans does not have much room to rise. Brow furrowed, I asked ChatGPT to help me improvise. Chatty Cathy, as we call her, will later be revealed to be a pathological liar.
Then came the lemon juice. I bought the same green bottle Jerry used. I tried to open it. I could not. Not even a little. I may be older now and have been through a bit of something, but I am convinced the government is trying to starve out the older population by making food packaging impossible to open.
I tried everything. I wedged it in the outside door and leaned full body weight on it. Nothing. So at 4:30 p.m., in pajamas, messy bun and slide shoes, I ran outside looking for a man human or any human to open the bottle. Normally there are a thousand e-bikers and enough passing cars to flag someone down. Not today. No neighbors. No seasonal folks. Kyle across the street, who is always puttering around, was nowhere. Not a soul. Did I miss the rapture?
Back inside, I grabbed Kleenex for grip because the bottle was now clammy and moist. Sorry, not sorry if you hate that word. If I suffered so will you. As Brandon Rainwater says, we in this together. Seriously, he is so funny, go follow him. I was about to start knocking on doors when I gave it one more Kleenex-twist and it finally broke open.
Back inside, flustered, hair in a messy bun, pajamas and all, I dumped the lemon juice in using a teaspoon because I do not have the right tools. Later I realized it was supposed to be tablespoons. Close counts in horseshoes and my new coined phrase, blind baking.
Cheesecake one assembled, into the oven it went. “Alexa, set a timer for forty-five minutes.” Technically it takes an hour, but since this was my first time with this oven, I planned to monitor early. On to cheesecake two.
At ingredient number two, the sugar, I discovered I was half a cup short. I had bought the Dixie Crystals shaker can, which you cannot see inside and the listed weight is useless. Shrinkflation strikes again. I FaceTimed my son, certain he had sugar, but he ignored the call from his beloved mother. Noted. I could have been lying on the floor with a broken hip. I refused to go out in pajamas and pay eighteen dollars for sugar at the corner store. Then I remembered the sugar packets in my office pantry for real estate client baskets. I grabbed fistfuls.
“How many packets equal half a cup?” I asked ChatGPT. She said four. Lies. Asked again. She said seven. More lies. Meanwhile, I was ripping open packets two at a time like a raccoon attacking a dumpster at midnight. Around sixteen packets in, I lost count. Also, shrinkflation has hit sugar packets too. We learned a lot today. When I get measuring spoons I am measuring how many sugar packs it takes for a teaspoon. I hope someone from Big Sugar is ready for the fury.
The little orange mixer, now on cheesecake two, was working like a rented mule. It smelled like warm plastic and electrical woes. I think I smelled smoke. Cheesecake one had been aerated because the mixer had a burst of early enthusiasm, cheesecake two was thick and slow. Cheesecake one rose like a balloon, threatening to spill over. Cheesecake two sat quietly like it was hungover from New Year’s Eve.
I then realized I had preheated the oven hotter than necessary and forgot to turn it down. Gotta get those walls nice and hot, you know. So both cheesecakes baked for thirty minutes at the surface temperature of Mercury. Alexa was juggling multiple timers. Every time I asked how much time was left, she recited timer number one, timer number two and so on and I was too tired to do time math.
Cheesecake one needed ten more minutes, so I added a third timer. I have made this cheesecake dozens of times, but today everything unraveled and I was too tired to understand how or why.
I monitored for the crack that signals doneness. Thirty minutes after removing them, I realized they were not done, so back in they went for another half hour. Who am I? What is the secret to life? Am I in a simulation? Watching me bake would be like watching a teenage girl change a tire for the first time.
I eyeballed ingredients, used condiment packets, nearly started an electrical fire and I know Sanford is looking down, shaking his head, saying his favorite phrase, “You are a terrible person.” Always said with love and always while laughing at the dumb predicaments I manage to get myself into. At this point I am over an hour late to a stuffing party where I will see the Colonel in the dining room with a candle stick. In my mind, every time we talk about the Colonel it is like a game of clue. Arrested development.
At this point, the only next step was to drag them to church and leave them at the altar. After cooling slightly, I tossed them in the fridge, sighed and gave them the Sign of the Cross while apologizing for my behavior.
Morning came. Cup of coffee in hand, I cracked the fridge door to peek. They looked okay, but dry. Nobody would know but me, I hope. Fruit garnish would disguise the crime scene.
Time for slicing. The top-secret cheesecake-slicing method is dental floss. Fresh floss if you really like whoever you are giving it to, just a joke, calm down. The final drama, I could not locate unflavored floss. Mint floss it is... dipped in boiling water to melt the wax and the mint off. Fingers crossed. I do not even own a needle and thread in this place.
The moment of truth came early. At eight a.m., my alarm went off for medication that has to be taken with food. Yes, I had cheesecake for breakfast and yes I took my meds with it and it was actually good. Probably not my best in history, but given the long road to get there, I was surprised it was not awful.
Shooting for not awful is not usually my goal, but my goals have been radically different these last few years.
If you have read this far, Happy Thanksgiving. I am grateful for you reading. Many of you are clients and I am grateful that you chose me to help you buy and sell real estate. I am grateful for many things, but most importantly for the altruistic living donor who gave me a kidney so I could live to make these cheesecakes in a little house built in 1950.
P.S. Jerry donated the recipe to the Bonita Springs Historical Society cookbook, still in publication. Proceeds help maintain the historic McSwain home circa 1915 and the last green space in Downtown Bonita Springs. You can print this story as “101 things what not to do” to accompany the recipe.
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