It’s the end of the month which means it’s time for the Daring Bakers’ Challenge. If you don’t know about this group of intrepid, take-no-prisoners bakers, you can find out more at their brand new website, The Daring Kitchen.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Now cheesecake and I don’t have the best history. You see, my father makes terrific cheesecake — huge, New York style cheesecake with a creamy filling and sour cream topping. He makes them every year at Christmas time for his students, and his fame as a cheesecake baker is widely acclaimed. I wouldn’t dare make traditional cheesecake for fear of being accused of trying to steal his thunder or worse, having my cheesecake come up terribly, terribly short. The one time I did try to make a cheesecake — pumpkin cheesecake, for Thanksgiving, it was roundly dismissed in favor of pumpkin pie.

So you see, I needed a little daring.

Fortunately, Jenny gave us lots of leeway with this cheesecake, allowing us to get creative with the crust, the flavoring of the cheesecake, and the topping, so I didn’t have to worry about stepping on my dad’s cheesecake toes (it also helps that he’s currently out of the country and can’t challenge my cheesecake). Always loving slightly unusual flavorings, I elected to go with an earl grey tea flavored cheesecake, and to complement the lemony flavor of the bergamot, the crust is made from animal cookies, which have a slight lemon flavor, which I boosted with lemon zest.

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