GAIA CHEESECAKE W/ CANDIED GINGER CRUST OF UNREST

(See the absurdly simple directions at the end of this post)
All human assemblies worth assigning energy are foodcentric, my book group is no exception. My taste-buds heel to my brain and I am like a dog: I must lick what I love.
"It's not your average book group"--this is not snobbery (which I'm certainly not opposed to). I actually mean markedly different, for better or worse, falling both well-above and well-below current averages for social eptitude, book selection trends, and the food offered at our gatherings, which became along the way, deeply thematic--from homemade guac and No Country For Old Men to Hellacious Blood Orange Tart with Midnight Crust for Dracula, in 60 Kitchen-Aid seconds.

A New Earth Cheesecake with Candied Ginger Crust of Unrest 4/17. I suppose "Tolle-house Cookies" were another possibility.

Mothers but not "mommies," we're no composed salad of Jennifer Weiner-wielding, Girlfriend-series clutching shells of pre-baby personality. The Let's Not Discuss Our Offspring During Group Time souffle occasionally falls, but is a policy nonetheless. Jodi Picoult is deemed anathema; she is viewed with the benign irritation of toast crumbs stuck in a rush seat, to the pure evil of say, salmonella poisoning. We are not (shudder) an Oprah's Book Club. Which is why the selection of A NEW EARTH--Oprah's latest fascination--was the Zebra Cookie of all Zebra Cookies.

I feel we should be concerned any time someone gets 500,000 people to join her "little" online book club and claims, in conjunction with ANE author, Eckhart Tolle: "We're out to change the world, folks!" Whoa. It feels to me like Oprah has just gassed up some kind of hideous world-wide mini-van, we're all going to the Harpoland Ashram, and I'm supposed to want to climb inside.

And let's be clear about "Oprah's Books." They are not her books, she did not write them. I had to admire that plucky Jonathan Franzen for not wanting her stamp on his masterpiece of mannerism, THE CORRECTIONS.
Frankly, Oprah's blessing on a book isn't the Big O I'm after, either.

Okay, so Oprah herself is probably not akin to ptomaine, but I wrestle with her pervasive grip on our culture. My personal conclusion is two-fold: her power cannot be underestimated and, as an entrepreneur I must contemplate her to be socially conversant.
But book groups are a bizarre phenomenon, and take these strange turns, a propensity shared with any group of women numbering greater than one. This is a group of super-smart, even intimidating women. But we're all...outcasts to some degree, fringe-people. The introverts who masquerade as extroverts--except when we don't have to. We've asked many people to join, but it is rare--and I am glad. I don't want more people to discover my masa-cheap hispanic market or join my book group.
Despite the number of women in a small space, there is safety and comfort in our book group. No one criticizes my time-management skills when I bring cheesecakes which look like planet earth. We fully embrace the duds or authors no one else loves. When it is your pick, it is your pick: warts, boils and carbuncles. Plus, since I am always up for and continue to suggest Anna Karenina, someone else's picks are great for forcing me outside of my comfort zone. I almost never read non-fiction, unless it's food and/or someone like MICHAEL RUHLMAN (and when it's both, a girl practically needs privacy, between his writing and his wife's photographs).

I tried to take it evenly, when, over home-made naan (they were NOT hockey-pucks, despite JT's insistence) and chutneys, my beloved, beloved SALMAN RUSHDIE was maligned, or I felt, sorely underappreciated and misunderstood. (Do not get me started on the evil Padma Lakshmi, who broke my old goat's heart, leaving him bereft. Yeah, now he's "just" the smartest man on the planet. Wait!--maybe I can angle to be wife #6?! ).

Even if you despise or feel discomfort with the upcoming selection (e.g. Sophie's Choice: "Damn. I'm not going to like the choice, am I?"), you can look forward to eating well, because when it comes to book group, it's "Eat together, Die alone," a LOST reference which makes me at least appear TV-savvy. [Wait a minute--is that a copy of THE FRENCH LAUNDRY COOKBOOK on Benjamin Linus' bookshelf? WOW--The Island IS a wormhole. If I were on that island, I would have to be an Other (with their mysterious proximity to really good food, clean sheets and book clubs) or have found my way off the island by the end of the pilot--lest I be forced to eat Dharma Initiative hash out of a can and learn to spear-fish through the projected 6th season. The only way living on the Beach might work for me is if everyone was immediately rescued "accidentally" leaving me with Dr. Jack Shepherd (he's a "fixer" he'd like me) in the Hatch with an unlimited supply of Dharma cans of beer.]

A New Earth was disappointing "but I'm glad we read it." We had a phenomenal discussion without merely and unsatisfactorily roasting the book. The problematic and not all that new earth-shattering reduction?: Ego is bad, attachments cause suffering, harboring the past or obsessing over the future will kill you. To which I say: Ego is responsible for many of the world's great works and certainly great meals; I am attached to my attachments--some of them bringing me insane pleasure; and finally, no KIDDING, but 24/7 mindfulness is just impossible and actually makes a person like me more clumsy.

Oh well, next month's book is The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime. I am not going to be silk-screening longitudal lines of chocolate syrup onto puff-pastry. Probably.

RECIPE AND PROCESS FOR GAIA CHEESECAKE WITH CANDIED GINGER CRUST: What's more ironic than revising a Cook's Illustrated recipe?
I almost never use a recipe, but I love cookbooks for ideas/ogling. Like a fling with pornography, cookbooks bring innovation & lecherous assistance to the day-to-day, year after year meat and potatoes of kids, mortgage, chicken. I've no interest in making America's Test-Kitchen of my life, but I appreciate those who'll try 65 versions of a recipe for me--especially if when it comes to my insecure realm: baked goods. This is adapted from the Cooks' Illustrated recipe (which is, yes..ironic).
All I did was add some finely chopped crystallized ginger to the crust, and some almond extract and three times the lemon zest to the batter.
The visual part of the cake is a ridiculously easy effect with disproportionate, almost unfair wow-factor. Though applied before baking, the color sits right on the surface, and while I had concerns the level of color would taste dreadful, it tasted like...cheesecake. No trace of food coloring bitterness, so I will ignore whatever those technicolor chemicals are doing to my insides.
SUPPLIES:
8-inch springform pan
pastry brush
green & blue food coloring
clean paintbrushes
hammer

Prepare cheesecake batter and pour into springform pan. Scatter drops of green and blue food coloring on top of the batter, swirl with a pastry brush until earthily delightful, but mindful not to lose the separate colors.
Bake according to directions. If you don't like your landforms and waterways, you can refine by hand-painting once the top of the cake is set (after first 10 minutes @ 500 degrees in this recipe).

All little girls need to go ACE OF CAKES on things at times. A hammer and curiosity lead to the perfect graham crust.

NOTE: I like my cheescake tall, dense and tart, with a pretty little crack like a shiver which indicates imperfection. Cooks' Illustrated gives 3 versions of this recipe, this one being for that dense texture, however...as Irony would have it, the time I actually follow a recipe (method-wise), I got something unexpected! This turned out super light and fluffy-creamy--which is fine, but not my true preference.

Also of note is that this is the only time in my life a cheesecake has not cracked. I figure that somewhere between the stratosphere and the mesosphere, the food coloring and swirling motion of my brush must have mystically sealed the earth's surface?

Am I the only dummy who has to re-measure my springform pan every time I use them?

To arrange platonic pan-measuring or a copy of the Cooks' llustrated recipe, e-mail me.