Eli Schulman past away decades ago. His legendary Chicago restaurant, Eli’s The Place for Steak, closed and then the building was actually demolished. All that remains are memories.
Until now. Eli’s had great American food and some savory dishes, like his famous House Dressing, are here in this cookbook. But first and foremost this is a cheesecake cookbook.
The book is a cleverly assembled collection of Eli’s perfected recipes. His cheesecake was famous for being somehow creamier. If you compare his base recipe, Original Plain Cheesecake, with others — like the Cheesecake Factory Original — you’ll see Eli used fewer eggs, less sugar, but more sour cream and even a little cake flour. If you believe the memories of Chicagoans, it made his different and spectacularly better.
This is a mix-and-match book. There is a chapter for fillings, one for crusts, one for outrageous toppings if you are going to apply one at all, and a final one for assembling a completed dessert. Now, some of us are cheesecake purists. It has to be just real cheesecake. But some of us like chocolate, too, so how could we not succumb to a Belgian Chocolate Cheesecake in Chocolate Crust. Look at the picture below and you’ll understand why purity can be abandoned.
There are 17 filling variations with these notable idea:
The Original “Plain” One
Baked Apple
Banana
Cinnamon Rum Raisin
Eggnog
Honey Ricotta
Pumpkin
Sabayon
Crusts are divided into rolled and pressed:
Classic Shortbread
Chocolate Shortbread
Almond Streusel
Chocolate Crumb
Nutmeg Graham Crumb
Toasted Almond
Some people bake and consume their cheesecake with no topping. And others cannot resist placing jewels on top, like:
Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache
Apricot Glaze
Caramelized Pineapple
Candied Blood Oranges
Blackberry Compote
Rhubarb Compote
Honey Caramel
If you take all the fillings, all the crusts, all the toppings, you find you will have 2,890 different cheesecakes you can assemble. At one a week, it’s going to be 56 years for you to try them all. Start with this Belgian Chocolate masterpiece. It does not need the Huckleberry Compote.
But, if you want …
