September. A time for forgetting the cesspool that is summer in the Mid-Atlantic region; for feeling as if you never fully appreciated the privilege it is to be cool enough to unironically wear a pair of jeans. Around here September is more a concept than reality: more prophesies of fall than actual autumn. But there will be some days – like today – that are fully, really, truly September: apple-cheeked, wholesome, a day of scudding clouds and neighbors lined up for an hour to buy a box of doughnuts.
The doughnuts are huge and improbably shaped: squidgy, hand-formed bracelets large enough for your upper arm. Beyond a stone wall a grandmother delivers a Halloween costume. Her granddaughter is three years old and going as a golden fairy princess – she parades through the doughnut line like royalty, hoping everyone notices how stunning she looks. And because this is one of Those Days, everyone does notice and appreciate the sight of a preschooler in a glittering, handmade costume. Who wouldn't?
A pretty Bernese mountain dog barks at someone she recognizes. Everyone in the slow-moving line is patient. Though the breeze smells like neither wood-smoke nor cinnamon (and oddly, not even doughnuts) it's enough to notice that it could. It is just that kind of a day. It is just that much proper September.
I tuck myself deeper into a corner of this brewery. It is nine in the morning, and the brewery operates as a coffee shop at this time of day. I chose to sit outside because the weather is altogether too nice to spend any time inside if we can help it. Later I will work, and then Andrew and I have plans to drive way out to the country, to the annual fair. We have plans to see a rodeo. We have plans to indulge maybe my worst tendency which is this: I like to watch danger for entertainment, since it usually turns out all right by the end.
I don't like to be in danger, but I like to watch danger. And of all the dangers I like to watch I think that bull-riding might be my favorite. It's so primal, you know. It's so actually dangerous – just pure, stupid danger – and that kind of danger is hard to find in our modern world. The dangers we have are rather more sordid and twisted and caused by each other against each other.
I like this other kind of danger, this a simple, predictable calculation: if you jump on the back of a riled up bull, he will probably try to fling you off. And if you do get flung off, you'd best be fleet-footed or you'll end up trampled. It isn't personal; it's just the natural way to treat someone who jumps on your back uninvited.
Anyway, I like rodeos.
Andrew says it's like the Roman coliseum, and that he's worried they'll get hurt – the bulls or the cowboys. He's a very empathetic person. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, of course, but I also have a bit of an opinion that if you've signed up as a cowboy, you're well aware of what that could mean, and took your chance anyway. And in that case you volunteered to possibly get hurt. And if you didn't want to maybe get hurt, you probably shouldn't have offered to ride a half-ton of angry beef. With or without us, they'll be riding those bulls. I, for one, want to see it.
Autumn is the time for county fairs in most American states – some of them happen in late summer, but most come in the fall. The one we go to, the one my parents live a mile from, is the hinge on which the turning of summer-to-fall swings. This fair always happens in mid-September, except when it's canceled for a hurricane. Some years the weather is hot, hot, hot and we buy so many cups of weak lemonade from concession stands that they decide to go ahead and start selling it in quart deli containers rather than cups. Other years, like this year, when the sun settles over the big white tents and tawdry carnival lights, everyone who didn't bring a sweater shivers a little and says, “It's really starting to cool down! Wonder if it'll stay this way?”
The fair brings out an assortment of unusual people – people you assume really must live somewhere in the county but you've never seen them except for every year at this fair, and you wonder where they spend their time and why you – quite literally – cannot recall ever running into them in any other context. Mostly it's the goth high-schoolers. So many goth high-schoolers. Each one punked up and feeling truly alone, or different, or maybe none of that, just fond of black kohl eyeliner and fingerless mesh gloves and wearing leather head to toe. And it strikes me as funny, what a long tradition the Goth High School Student is, and how they've been wearing the same outfits for the last thirty years, and maybe long before that, and you wonder if maybe there will always and forever be a contingent of the same at every county fair, ad infinitum. They look incongruous in the setting of the midway, all neon lights and manic, piping music, and cotton candy colors. They're a visual contradiction of terms. Like Panic! At The Disco, and it works somehow: sharp edges in all the fun. Black, like negative space. Like shadows cast by the bright things around them.
Here is a truth: the Ferris wheel holds appeal no matter how much leather you're sweating under.
I wish that I could say the best food I've ever eaten was fair food, but that is patently false. Fair food is...well, it's a bit like airplane food in that you have to set aside any comparison to real foods and compare it only to other foods you've eaten at fairs. The Ruritan Club makes awful burgers that taste like a thousand-pound meatloaf. You can always get a basket of fried shrimp. Cotton candy begged from a younger relative's bundle is a nice bite. The really excellent - in any context - thing I used to get is not sold there anymore (frozen cheesecake on a stick, dipped in chocolate). Of course there is a row of really good food-trucks on the outer ring, but who wants those? The entire point of food at the fair is that it's really kind of awful. You want to be unsure if the chicken on a stick is going to make you ill (it never will, but it's good for your microbiome to be in doubt sometimes); you want to haunt the funnel cake stand only after closing when they might cook you up one final, somewhat-dingy funnel-cake for free so they don't waste the batter; you want to eat mediocre barbecue and could-be-improved French fries with dubious ketchup on a sticky picnic table (should ketchup be refrigerated? Should it not? Is now the time to debate this point?).
The food trucks butt in on the completeness of the fair as its own entity: I do not want to be reminded of the fish tacos I can eat any time of year. (Exceptions are made for excellent stands that only show up in the context of the fair, like the new German cart selling schnitzel and currywurst). This is the moment for carny-food, for goth makeup, for dusty feet and the smell of 4-H tents and running the gauntlet of craft vendors desperate to sell even one football-themed wreath or a pair of hand-painted cornhole boards.
I clutch a bottle of water and reach for Andrew's hand. How many years did I attend the fair alone, wishing for a hand to hold and a boy to bring? And now we're here, married and wishing for other things, but we're here, and it is perfect. We stand in line for a Ruritan Club burger, and pump sticky red ketchup onto our fries. Everything is okay. It is September, it is the fair, and we (like bull-riders) will hazard our luck.
Here is a recipe for chocolate dipped cheesecake bites, the laid back, tasty-but-lazy version; really the same level of effort as a county fair. Of course this rendition lacks the sensuality of a heavy wedge of cheesecake on a dowel-rod (Impressive! Lavish! Daunting!) but it is more achievable and spares your feelings about chopping up a whole cheesecake you’ve just baked which feels like a cruel ask.
We start with a tasty, no-bake cheesecake batter loaded into a piping bag and piped onto pieces of cinnamon graham cracker, then topped with another cracker to make a little cheesecake sandwich. See? You don’t even have to make a crust. This is basically the thing my cousins used to do when they dipped graham crackers in store-bought chocolate frosting, except this is actually A Preparation of a real cheesecake recipe - not a standing pantry snack eaten in times of uncomfortable emotion. The filling is a sort of scaled-down version of the No Bake Cheesecake by Sally’s Baking Addiction. (By the way, when you’ve done all the piping work, you'll freeze these in case I haven’t mentioned).
When the bits are frozen, it is time to dip them in dark chocolate. If you’re very on top of things you could load a popsicle stick into the little sandwiches before freezing, but I did not have any and I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. Might make the dipping situation easier, might make the freezing space complicated. I personally found that I had no issue just lowering the bars into melted chocolate on a fork and spooning the chocolate overtop. Yee-haw.
Chocolate-Dipped Frozen Cheesecake Bars
180 ml. heavy whipping cream (3/4 c.)
452 g. full-fat cream cheese, softened (two 8-oz. packages)
70 g. granulated sugar
10 g. confectioner’s sugar
45 g. sour cream
1 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
2 packets cinnamon graham crackers
10 oz. dark chocolate chips
1 tablespoon coconut oil
large piping bag and round piping tip
In the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a whip attachment, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Scoop into a smaller bowl and set aside.
Switch to paddle attachment. In the mixing bowl, beat together cream cheese with granulated sugar until very smooth. Scrape sides and bottoms of bowl and mix again - we don’t want any lumps!
Add in the confectioner’s sugar, sour cream, lemon juice, and vanilla and mix until smooth. Scrape the bowl and paddle and mix one last time.
Remove bowl from stand mixer and to the batter add the whipped cream. Fold in gently and continue folding till well incorporated (but not so much that you’ve beaten out all the air). Scoop into a piping bag fitted with a large, round tip.
On a rimmed sheet tray (a quarter-sheet size unless you have a chest freezer), lay down a sheet of parchment paper, then break cinnamon graham crackers into quarters along the scored lines. You’re looking for “finger” shaped bars of graham cracker. Lay these out on the parchment, reserving half for topping the cheesecake filling.
Carefully pipe the filling along each graham cracker (I like to use a wiggly motion to fit as much cheesecake goodness onto the bar as I can). Without pressing the filling out the sides, top each cheesecake bar with another piece of graham cracker and gently settle each with a quick finger-tap. Repeat till crackers and filling are used up.
Allow cheesecake bars to set in the fridge for 1-2 hours, then transfer to the freezer and allow to freeze solidly, at least 6 hours or overnight.
When the cheesecake bars are fully frozen, we dip them! Set a small saucepan with an inch of water to heat on the stove. Pour the chocolate chips into a heat-proof bowl (I use stainless steel) that will nest into the saucepan without touching the water. When the water is boiling turn down to a simmer, and settle the bowl with chocolate chips on top. Add the coconut oil, and stir gently till smooth and melted. Depending on your brand of chocolate you may need more coconut oil to thin it out enough for dipping. Coconut oil is what will create the thin, snappy shell of chocolate we are hoping for when it meets the frozen cheesecake.
Remove chocolate from heat, set aside. Working to keep cheesecake bars frozen by removing a couple at a time, dip the bars into the melted chocolate by lowering them in with fork and spooning melted chocolate over them. Tap against the edge of the bowl to shake off excess chocolate, then set to harden on a parchment-covered tray. Return to freezer and repeat till all bars are dipped.
Your frozen cheesecake bars will last in the freezer several weeks in an airtight container (and probably longer, though their flavor might deteriorate with time). This should make quite a large batch, at least two dozen but possibly more like three, depending on how thickly you pipe on the cheesecake filling.
I hope that you enjoy this recipe, and make it for yourself sometime! And now I need to know all about your fairs. Are you a county fair person? A state fair person? I’ve heard state fairs have excellent food but I have never actually investigated this point. At any rate, tell me all about it while I’m still high on all this great September weather.
Love,
Rachel
Healdsburg Parade and fair. FFA and 4-H exhibits. Greased pig chase and greased pole climb. First kiss and stuffed animal gift. Goldfish as prizes. The beginning of my taco obsession. The secret, a slite amount of grated Parmesan cheese on top...If I were asked if I were on a deserted Island and could have only 1 food, it would be tacos..... And fingers stuck in Chinese puzzles.....corn dogs....sno cones....only ride is pony ride. No commercial concessions, only non profit or community organizations. The simple life of Healdsburg in the 60's, early 70's.
I can't wait to try this! I think cheesecake just naturally lends itself to innovation--I remember IHOP years ago having the most amazing Deep-Fried Cheescake. But now I'm wondering why all the delightful cheesecake things end up being discontinued...
Thank you for sharing this, it felt just like being at the Fair!