Pear Cheesecake

 ... 1/2 a cheesecake left and served on a Halloween Cat dish ...

Wyona called me tonight to say that if I would walk down to her house, there was a piece of pear cheesecake waiting for me. She also invited David Wood, Moiya, Glen and Janet to the feast.

What we were mostly curious about is how someone would have a recipe for pear cheesecake.  She went to her cupboard to bring out two old cookbooks that she had received as wedding gifts, one from Aunt Erva and one from Aunt Mary. That would make the cookbooks over fifty years old.

The Better Homes and Garden Cookbook had the old familiar red plaid checkered front.  The McCalls Cookbook showed an equal amount of wear and tear, the cover only hanging on by a thread and some of the pages falling out of the book.  Someone suggested to Wyona that she do some repair work with reinforcements on the hole-punched pages, but Moiya pointed out that  doing that would loose some of the recipe amounts or instructions.

note the layers of pear in the cheesecake
 ... imagine the taste of the whipping cream on top ....

The pears  in the cheesecake weren't some ordinary pears, but ones selected from the pear tree outside of Wyona's house. She carefully peeled them, sliced them and then layered them first on the bottom shortcake crust and then again on top of a layer of cheesecake.

I don't know why I am telling all of this except to say that the taste of the cheesecake was incredible.  I thought perhaps she had soaked the pears in a liqueur or placed a spice-rub on them.  But no!  Just the taste of sun-kissed pears surrounded by cream cheese.

It goes without saying that she had red candles in crystal holders reflecting on a piece of mirror and the mirror ball going.

Another perfect day at the Shuswap.

Arta