Three Cities of Spain Classic Cheesecake

The whole time I was making this cheesecake, I was thinking why the heck is it called the Three Cities of Spain Classic Cheesecake? Is there something Spanish about cheesecake? Is it derivative of the styles of three particular cities in Spain? I've never been to Spain, maybe cheesecake is a big thing there, what do I know?

But when I looked up the recipe on Epicurious, all my questions were answered. Three Cities of Spain was a coffeehouse (now closed) in Santa Fe. Oooohhhh.

Now, I have to make a confession. I'm kind of ambivalent about cheesecake. It always seems just a little too rich for me, and so I did make some alterations to the recipe which I try not to do on the first pass, but I was making this one for my bookgroup and I wanted it to be perfect.

So instead of using full fat cream cheese and sour cream, I used light sour cream for the topping and subbed 1 light cream cheese(out of 3) for the cream cheese.

It really was the perfect balance.



This isn't my photo, but it looks just like the one I made. I used Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers for the crust, and Bonne Maman cherry preserves for the topping.