Lavender Cheesecake

Last weekend I went to Whidbey Island for a wine tasting at a friend’s beach house. It was lovely event: amazing food, great wines, fascinating conversations, and some spectacular sunsets.

I promised to bring a dessert since I wanted an excuse to cook with flowers as that is my assignment for this month.  My plan was to make a lavender cheesecake.

I already had a recipe which I adapted from a regular cheesecake recipe and made successfully years ago. I put a few lavender stems into the hot milk mixture as it’s cooking, then remove them after they’ve imparted their flavor. I also sneak lavender into the crust by making a praline: grinding lavender buds and sugar together in the blender, then stirring that into hot water, which I pour onto a pie plate and freeze in the freezer. When I make the crumb crust, I add the lavender praline (ground up) in place of plain sugar.

But this was before the days of the Internet, and this time when I looked for a recipe, I found dozens. I chose the one that was the simplest (no-bake!) and it created such a silky, smooth dream of a cheesecake that half of the guests at the dinner wanted a copy of the recipe. (It was the women who wanted the recipe, not the men, which is odd as lavender is supposedly one of the scents that men find erotic. Maybe men just don’t make cheesecake.)

Here’s my version of the recipe:

1)      Smash 2 cups of shortbread cookies into crumbs. (You could really go for the lavender theme and use lavender shortbread. Or perhaps just toss some ground up lavender buds into the crumb mixture. Not too much! Subtle is the adjective for lavender.)

2)      Melt five tablespoons of butter and mix with the crumbs. Press into the bottom of a springform pan. Put in the refrigerator to chill while you make the filling.

3)      Crush three tablespoons of lavender. Pour two and a half tablespoons of boiling water over them. Let it steep for at least 15 minutes. Then strain out the lavender buds. This is your lavender infusion.

4)      Mix together ¾ cup of honey and one 8 ounce package of cream cheese that you’ve left out to soften. I used an electric beater. You could use a whisk, if you prefer.

5)      Add the lavender infusion, mixing carefully, not too much.

6)      Whip one and a quarter cups of heavy cream. Again I recommend an electric beater. This took a long time even with one.

7)      Fold the whipped cream into the honey/lavender/cream cheese mixture. Then pour it into the crust.

8)      Refrigerate for three to four hours before serving.

You can find the actual recipe here.

The next time I do it, I think I will add a second package of cream cheese as the filling layer was pretty thin, but no one complained about that. The texture was as smooth as silk and the lavender flavor pronounced but subtle.

I thought about garnishing it with lavender stalks dipped in simple syrup and set on tinfoil to dry. I think that would have worked out nicely but I didn’t try it. I also didn’t take a picture of the cheesecake so you’ll have to make do with the sunset.

If you want to serve it with wine, I’d suggest a Muscat (might be too sweet) or an ice wine, maybe a late-harvest Riesling. We tried a regular Riesling at the recommendation of my wine merchant and it didn’t really work, though it was a lovely Riesling (I like the ones that smell like gasoline and this one did).