JNS
The celebrity chef leads her team on a bakery crawl in the capital ahead of the Shavuot holiday.
On May 19, two weeks before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, celebrity chef and cookbook author Jamie Geller, who now serves as the spokesperson and chief communications officer of the Jewish educational organization, Aish, set out with her team—including the writer of this article— to taste and rate some of the best cheesecakes in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has a plethora of bakeries, each with its unique style of cheesecake presentation. “We aimed to sample as wide a variety of different kinds of cheesecakes as we could in one morning,” said Geller, who helps curate Jewlish, a Jewish food website and sub-section of Aish.com., named after one of her best-selling books.
“Shavuot is my favorite holiday,” Geller exclaimed. “Even though all dairy commemorates the tradition, Shavuot has become known as the cheesecake holiday, and I fully enjoy one day of dairy bliss. This is the only time that I reflect on my time in America and fondly remember having a two-day holiday, a full 48 hours, to indulge in cheesecake and all things dairy.”
In modern times, cheesecake has become entwined with celebrating Shavuot, a tradition for which many reasons are given. The most prominent of these is that Jews were given culinary (kashrut) laws regarding the proper treatment of meat at Mount Sinai on Shabbat and were forbidden from slaughtering or cooking meat that day, so instead they ate dairy.
Another reason is that Mount Sinai is called Har Gavnunim (mountain of peaks) in Hebrew and its etymology is close to the Hebrew word for cheese—gvina. A third reason given is that by eating dairy products, we give thanks to God for giving the Jews the land of Milk and Honey.
While Geller eats only in restaurants with a "mehadrin" or "badatz" level of kashrut supervision, she brought her team to help explore some of the popular hotspots around the city with different kashrut certifications.
Ahead of the cheesecake crawl, Geller described her ideal cheesecake to JNS: “To me, the perfect cheesecake is New York-style—creamy, semi-rich, a bit savory and full-bodied. It’s a mile high with a small token layer of crust on the bottom."
She added, with a smile, "Cheesecake can also be classified as a protein, so I get to indulge with no guilt on this holiday. The rest of the holidays, aside from Chanukah, we’re pretty much rolling in meat and potatoes.”
The first stop saw the team visit Marzipan Bakery on Agrippas Street, mostly famous for its melt-in-your-mouth rugelach. The bakery also had a wide variety of (frozen) cheesecakes available.
Geller’s team, which aimed to try different styles in each place, chose the typical Israeli "crumb" cheesecake after discussing with the staff what their top recommendation would be. “Growing up, my Israeli aunt Zehava used to make this style of cheesecake with crumbs, it took me back a bit to that memory,” Geller said.
Overall, the team determined that the cheesecake was well-rounded and creamy, with a lemon undertone. It was a solid cheesecake and received a respectable 7 out of 10 from the 6 tasters who judged it based on composition, taste, heaviness or lightness of cheese and how well the crust complements the cheese.
“The classic Israeli cheesecake with crumbs on top is the typical kind that all the kids bring home from gan (pre-school), and you know there were 25 fingers in that cake, but you let the kids eat it anyway,” Geller quipped.
The next stop was Berman Bakery, also on Agrippas Street. There, the team sampled a cheese log that was labeled "baked cheesecake."
“This was more of a cake than a cheesecake,” the team determined. “It wasn’t what we were looking for today,” Geller added.
Next came the Oreo cheesecake from English Cake, across Agrippas from the Machane Yehuda shuk (outdoor market). This cake was really exciting; its appearance enthralled some of the team members, but they said the cheese was far more of a gelatinous cream than a typical cheese. The cake was rated a 6 out of 10.
Following that, the crew stepped into Boutique Central, where they tried a classic New York-style cheesecake. “This was terrific,” one of the team tasters exclaimed. “It has everything I was looking for, a full-bodied cheese, a light crust that complemented the entirety of the cake, and a second layer of creamy cheese on top.” The overall score for the cake was 8.5 out of 10.
Leaving the shuk area, the team headed to King George Street to sample two cheesecakes from the French-style patisserie, Yehuda Bakery. One was a pecan cheesecake, the other a caramel-topped version.
They said the pecan headed toward a more gelatinous consistency with nut flavoring diffusing into it, while the caramel held a stronger cheese body and more varied flavor. The overall scores given by their team were 6 for the pecan and 7 for the caramel.
From there, the group headed down to Yoel Solomon Street to sample Napoleon Patisserie’s lotus cheesecake. It came in a small circular torte-like shape that, the team determined, was full of cheesecake flavor.
“This is a 10!” Geller exclaimed after tasting just the first bite of the lotus cheesecake, half-covered by lotus cookie-flavored crust and half by a delicious cream.
“This is a little piece of heaven. It is exactly what I hoped for and wish to have this Shavuot!”
The entire team ranked the lotus cheesecake fairly highly, scoring an average of 9.5 from the six team members, having garnered perfect scores from both Geller and another taster.
It came time for the last stop on the crawl, which brought the team to Kadosh Café Patisserie. Here, the group faced a challenge: there was no cheesecake left!
After speaking with several staff members and explaining what was taking place, a waiter headed into the kitchen and found a single piece of Basque-style cheesecake in the back of a fridge.
As the team of tasters dug in, it became apparent that Kadosh, which has a reputation for serving delicious, tantalizing cakes, once again did not disappoint. The darkness of the basque-style cheesecake was in full play, as was the full body of the cheese itself. The piece of forgotten cheesecake ranked at a lofty 8.5. It left us all wondering how good it would have been if it were freshly made right out of the oven.
“The inspiration for the cheesecake crawl came about as a culmination of several different factors,” Geller said. “We were looking for a team-building experience themed around the holidays that could also be used as a cool piece of social media content that will help other people celebrate the holiday. As we were sitting around eating the different cheesecakes, we went around the table and discussed different reasons for the tradition of why we eat cheesecake and dairy on the holiday of Shavuot. We did some research, we learned about the holiday and a lot about cheesecakes in Jerusalem. It was a win-win on many levels.”
Waxing philosophical, she added, “This is exactly what food during the holidays is for. It is a means to an end to get us all together, as families, as friends, around a table, to talk, to connect with one another. After all, the food, the cheesecake, is just a means to bring us together around the table to spend the holiday together, to learn, to love and to live."
Concluding the cheesecake search in Jerusalem, Geller said, "We will certainly be doing similar projects in the future, and I encourage anyone who can do so, to conduct their own crawl or taste test with their family or work colleagues. It helps get everyone into the holiday spirit. I wish everyone who reads this a happy and joy-filled holiday.”
For more information, go to jamiegeller.com/holidays/top-5-tips-for-kosher-cheesecake-perfection/
