One of my all thyme favorite desserts is cheesecake. UP NEXT: Grilled Plums with Caramel Sauce Hats off to Wisconsin Dairy Farmer’s for making Wisconsin America’s Dairyland. I might be bias but Wisconsin milk, cream, cheese, ice cream and butter is by far is the absolute best. Just sit and think for a moment…what if we didn’t have cream cheese? Think of all of the recipes we wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for cream cheese! The horror of it! No cheesecake, dips, sauces or The “star ingredients,” are milk and cream from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and Lowville, New York. Today, Philadelphia Cream Cheese is loved by chefs and home cooks, as a base for desserts, dips and sauces. Philadelphia truly became a household name in 1928, when Phenix merged with the wholesale cheese-delivery business Kraft to form the Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company. Over the years, the company went through a few changes and Reynolds eventually sold the trademarked name Philadelphia to the Phenix Cheese Company. Reynolds wanted people to know the cheese was high quality and Philadelphia was associated with high quality dairy products at the time. This led to them putting the name “Philadelphia” on the foil-wrapped blocks of cream cheese. At the time, Pennsylvania had a reputation for its high-quality dairy farms. Reynolds (a larger cheese distributor in the state) to sell larger quantities of cream cheese. Lawrence wouldn’t start selling his cream cheese under the name “Philadelphia” for a few more years. He accidentally added too much cream and created a richer, more spreadable cheese. Philadelphia Cream Cheese which was founded by a man named William Lawrence, has been making its cream cheese in New York since 1872. Lawrence, a dairyman from Chester, New York, was attempting to make Neufchâtel cheese, a tangy, crumblier cheese product that was popular in Europe at the time. If Philadelphia cream cheese isn’t from Philly, then why is it even called that? In fact it’s not produced there and has never been manufactured in the Philadelphia or in the state of Pennsylvania for that matter. What is arguably the world’s most popular brand of cream cheese did not originate in Philadelphia. To each their own, as the old saying goes. Now my hubby on the other hand likes his cheesecake piled high with cherry pie filling and non-dairy whipped topping.

We love any type or flavor of cheesecake but I still prefer plain old cheesecake and New York Style Cheesecake. Some of you will ring in the New Year with a glass of bubbly but I’m going to say goodbye to 2020 with cheesecake! Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cheesecake is the Queen of all Cheesecakes, in my opinion. What better way to say goodbye to this bizarre year than with a piece of cheesecake.

Philadelphia cream cheese cake