Monday, April 9, 2012

Palm Beach-style Cheesecake

You've heard of New York-Style Cheesecake, right?  Well, I call this cheesecake, "Palm Beach-Style" because of the shells!  Don't you love it?

I worked backwards on this one.  I wanted a dessert to highlight the realistic look of the shells, so I needed something that I could pile graham cracker crumbs on to look like sand.  Cheesecake was the the natural choice! 

It all started when I wanted to make white chocolate shells, so I visited a cake and candy supply store in Florida and bought several different shell molds

My niece and nephew were visiting Florida this week too and together we molded the white chocolate discs into shells (melt chocolate discs in microwave, pour into molds, tap on counter repeatedly to allow bubbles trapped in chocolate to rise and pop, harden for 5 minutes in freezer, unmold - it's that easy!).

Then I decided that I wanted to try giving them a soft color sheen with edible pearl dust.  The shells shown here are made using Bronze, Gold, Pink and Lilac pearl dust.  Simply use a food-safe paint brush and brush on the edible dust - it is gorgeous and now I want to luster everything!

The cheesecake is just cheesecake - I used a Martha Stewart Everyday Food app to find a recipe on my phone so that we could bake on vacation.  It was  a classic recipe, so feel free to use your favorite cheesecake recipe.

It turned it out better than I could have imagined!  This is how we do cheesecake Palm Beach-Style!

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