Death by cheesecake

My mother is the type of the person who would have a heart attack over a cheesecake. We'd call 911 and they'd ask how it happened:
"Cheesecake."
"Cheesecake?"
"Yes, cheesecake."
"I don't think one piece of cheesecake would cause a heart attack."
"No, she didn't eat the cheesecake, she didn't even make the cheesecake yet. She was so stressed out over making it that she had a heart attack."

This amazes me because my mother and father ran a pretty successful catering business. It was a branch off of my father's butcher shop, Mario's Gourmet. I remember as a kid platters of food being loaded into our red GMC van. Pasta dishes, chicken francese, veal marsala, platters of cold cuts. I would always help arrange the cold cuts into little rolls of turkey or folded triangles of genoa salami. I could arrange a mean cold cut platter before I learned my times tables. I may have been too young, but I never knew my mother was on the verge of a coronary every time the four burner pot came out. My mother grew up around food, and large quantities of it. My grandfather, being a restaurant chef, had --and still has-- no concept of portion control. He could feed fifty on any given Tuesday.

My parents, too, usually over shoot portions by about twenty to thirty heads, but not without much stress and over analyzation. My mother can discuss whether or not she should make meatballs as an appetizer for weeks. We've come to coin the term "analysis paralysis" (which we may have heard on Oprah), but it describes my mother perfectly. She will sleep on a decision until she's in a coma.

But back to the cheesecake. My mother hasn't made a cheesecake in a while, but since its the holidays, she likes to keep enough cream cheese in the house "just in case." My mother thought she was in the clear this year until 2 days before Christmas. There was a call from my uncle telling my mother that my 12 year old cousin, Raffaella, asked if she could make her cheesecake. And that's when the panic began to settle in. Running to the store to get more cream cheese (my brother and I started eating the extra cream cheese that was lying in the fridge), running to the store again to get a fresh tub of sour cream. Baking a graham cracker crust, burning a graham cracker crust, then re-baking the graham cracker crust. Finally, after it all came together, tip toe-ing around the kitchen to make sure the cheesecake wouldn't fall. Under normal circumstances, the cheesecake probably would have been baked to perfection without a misstep, but because of the short notice and self-induced stress it took a little more effort for it to be baked to perfection.

The cheesecake ended up delicious and light. Scrumptious in every way. But overstressed bakers take heed. Learn from my mother's distress, take a step back from your mixer for a deep breath. You'll only over mix the flour or burn the first batch if you engage in baking under stress.