Nutella Cheesecake Pie

with Toasted Coconut Flake Topping

Although the first Cheeseboro Kitchens product going to market will be our already popular Pop Sauce™, the dish that is most responsible for the very existence of Cheeseboro Kitchens is my late father's sweet potato cheesecake pie.

I've been making my version of it for decades, and only over the last year or so have I come up with other iterations of the fusion-ideated baked dessert. By the time I was making and selling them in larger quantities I offered a (seasonally appropriate) pumpkin cheesecake version, a chocolate-covered raspberry version, and a banana and vanilla bean ("Ban-illa") version that quickly became my best-seller.

Realizing I hadn't baked any cheesecake pies in quite some time, I let a random supermarket sighting of a jar of a well-known hazelnut and cocoa spread inspire me to create a Nutella-centric cheesecake pie.

Like the other pies, this would be layered, lining the bottom of a pie crust with a plain cheesecake batter (with a dash of Valencia orange zest added), topped with a Nutella-mixed cheesecake batter.

As each cheesecake pie evokes fond dessert memories of my youth, for this iteration I decided to top the pie with coconut flakes, which I threw into a hot oven to get just the perfect toast on them that I've always loved. 

Once out of the oven, I always let the pies cool completely to room temperature before putting them in the fridge to chill. Once chilled I adhered an ample layer of toasted coconut flakes onto a full spread of softened Nutella that covered the top of the pie. 

I then returned the pies to the refrigerator to properly chill and set overnight. By morning each pie — and the first slice form a pie — was perfect.

What I've always loved about food and cooking are the endless number of ways a food or dish can evoke a singular positive reaction, whether it be just something that is innovatively delicious or the thought or memory of an important time, place, or person in my life.

My continued quest with Cheeseboro Kitchens is to continue to create foods (and food products) that hopefully do both — which was always my dream, as well as my father's.