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fluffier the texture remained. The fastest way to chill it was to take it from the oven and put it straight into the freezer. While Chris was telling me his story, a blueberry cheesecake was thawing on the table between us. I realized my moment had arrived. I was going to have to eat the cake. I was pretty curious, now that I’d heard about this special chilling process to preserve the light and fluffy texture. As Chris slid the box over I caught a look at the ingre- dients label. It was surprisingly short and surprisingly specific: not just cream cheese,

but Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Not sour cream, but Daisy Sour Cream (wait, sour cream?!). Oh and, not graham crackers, but Keebler Graham Crackers. “Tell me about this,” I said, nodding at the label. The ingredients, like the chilling process, have been intensely tested and retested. Technically, Chris points out, a pastry chef wouldn’t call this a cake but a custard filling. That’s because Cotton Blues uses no starch of any kind to bind its cheese- cake. Philadelphia Cream Cheese (generic brands just aren’t as good and brown too

that’s never pasty. Thinking back to Chris’s ruminating-cow face, I realized why he understood my concerns. This whole cheese- cake was designed to be the opposite of what I’ve come to expect. It only helped that my sample had swirls of Mississippi blueberry puree to offer another layer of bright, tangy complexity. The filling was indulgent but balanced, the sugar restrained enough that the sour cream tang made it feel almost light. When you buy a frozen Cotton Blues cheesecake, you can cut one slice out at a time, letting it thaw on the counter while you return the rest to the freezer. (A knife run under hot water does the trick beautifully.) As Chris told me, “People can eat it like ice cream,” a bit at a time, until that sad day when it’s all gone. But then you can decide which flavor to try next. As is true of the entire story of Cotton Blues and its cheese- cakes, there are things that are meant to be. Cotton Blues cheesecakes are available in Original, Sea-Salted Caramel, Blueberry and Strawberry.

quickly), Daisy Sour Cream (for a bit of tang and airiness), sugar and vanilla are bound together with whole eggs, carefully added by hand. The crust is also handmade — Keebler Graham Crackers pounded into coarse dust, bound with butter and pressed into a delightfully knobby and imperfect shell. The crust is par-baked, then filled, baked again and then frozen. The absence of any flour or cornstarch means a silken, fluffy, creamy texture

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