Kiwi style as in using up the kiwi salad which we forgot to serve at Thanksgiving. I had threatened to turn it all into syrup, but then I'd have had to store the syrup. Two things happened while I was accomplishing more important tasks: The lovely imported sheep's milk feta fell out of the fridge on its head. The one thing that was just in a plastic vacuform grocery store container full of liquid! The impact loosened the seal and most of the brine leaked out, which means use it soon. Yeah, I could have made some kind of brine to refill it but that didn't make as much sense as finding a new job for it when I didn't have all the other ingredients yet.

I was thinking cheesecake with the kiwi and feta. But, while I've made all kinds of cheesecakes, I'm no expert, and I was thinking eggwhite protein powder instead of wet eggs because of the moisture in the fruit and feta, but I still wasn't sure of the proportions or anything, and I didn't have or find any recipes that would give a good starting point. Moisture control is at the very center of cooking and baking both, though moreso in baking and especially with a main ingredient that's mostly fat. ARGH!

The other thing that happened? Petalique had been commending the ginger-pumpkin cheesecake (which she'd posted maybe last year? as a newspaper clipping and which I'd saved), from Mother Wonderful's book (Mother Wonderful's Cheesecakes and Other Goodies: With 20 Absolutely New No-Bake Cheesecakes by Myra Chanin). Just now, she'd posted it again and shown the book cover as well. I love books, so I looked it up, and there I found a copy in excellent condition for such an old book. The other thing that happened was that it arrived!

It's an interesting book, but at first I was just seeing recipes very like all the ones I knew. I needed one for fresh fruit. I checked the index. No kiwi :) No shock. I looked at orange. No wet. Strawberries? Yes! A cheesecake recipe with fresh wedges of strawberry mixed in. That's close. They even have fairly similar acidity, I think, at least to my tongue. So, strawberry. It calls for strawberry liqueur and extract. I have a jar of Grand Marnier that's going to sugar. The cork dissolved from old age, so I strained it well, and have been trying to use up the last few ounces. Orange should go well with kiwi, I thought, and it's not all that orangy. More boozy and sweet I omitted the extract in deference to moisture control.

For a crust, I'd decided on using up the toasted sliced almonds I'd had left from the roasted apple pie last month, with some cookie crumbs to help hold it together. I used half the almond slice volume of crumbs. It could have taken an equal portion, given the air space. Some of the butter ran out of the spring form for not being absorbed. BTW, I need too little to put the cookies in the food processor (even the insert small bowl), but didn't want to do the bang with a rolling pin in a plastic bag routine, so I tried putting them through my funky little Chinese hand cranked FP, with the grating blades because I didn't feel kind looking for something "better". It worked just fine. A little muscle to get it started, then easy sailing to uniform fine crumbs. I think it worked better than either the rolling pin or the big FP.

I read through the commandments of do's and don'ts in the front of the book, some surprising. I did use the egg protein, moistened with mashed up kiwi instead of water--more kiwi than called for but it was less wet. It worked fine, but perhaps could have used a third "egg". The kiwi was very sweet, so I cut back the sugar a lot, to maybe a sixth of what was called for, especially so the tang of the feta would be present. I skipped the salt because of the feta, though. So, it was half and half by weight, fancy feta (drained on paper of its remaining brine) and Philly, both with plenty of salt by my standards. And I did the sour cream topping, but my sealed box of sour cream was a little old, and while it wasn't spoiled or moldy or anything, it was very sour, like perhaps trying to ferment? But it was otherwise perfect, so I just doubled the sugar for that, thinking that the topping didn't need to compete with the feta for tang.

So, it came out of the oven lovely and brown on top, but fell a little as I was trying to get the topping on. I think it could have used a little longer in the oven, or that extra "egg". The center didn't jiggle, but the texture shows where it fell, and is best at the outside where it didn't. I wasn't going for beauty. I'd planned to decorate the sides with halves of the red grapes from the kiwi bowl, and to put a few kiwi wedges around the top, but for home use I decided I had better things to do. :)

There are flaws. I should have hand mixed the cheeses together by hand before beating them. i had just crumbled the feta and trusted them to marry, during the five minutes of beating with scrapedowns every couple of minutes. There are occasional pockets of too much tang. And the kiwi *in* the topping looks lumpy and weird. I should have just put it on top and made pretty, but I decided it should be cooked along with the topping. I can't say why....

For all the flaws, this is a really yummy cake, and it doesn't eat heavy like so many of the type do. I don't know that I'll ever bother to perfect it, but the one I made is well on its way to all gone, and is very enjoyable.