The Cheesecake Recipe Cher Says No One Can Beat

You won't find Cher speaking highly of even the best cheesecakes in the U.S. for the very reason that she only considers one recipe to be the best of the best. For someone who is extremely meticulous about the food she eats and the drinks she does and doesn't imbibe, it's a big deal if Cher considers a certain cheesecake recipe fit for her discriminating taste. But then again, we can't really say that such a preference is free of bias, given that the legendary singer's favorite cheesecake is the one her late mom, Georgia Holt, made for her and her family.

Recalling how much she loved and enjoyed her mom, Georgia's cheesecake, Cher once revealed that she couldn't just have one slice whenever it was served at Thanksgiving and Christmas. "We would always have a bunch of people over, and they would all start to slice their cheesecake before we had dinner and then hide it someplace," she said (via Allrecipes). "...I always reserved a second one in the back of the fridge for later, because the cheesecakes were always the first to go." However, she admitted that instead of regular slices, she would get two smaller pieces so that she wouldn't feel bad about the indulgence.

Cher's mom's cheesecake recipe is so good that it made it into the singer's line of artisanal gelato, Cherlato, as one of the brand's signature flavors. The gelato artist who made this venture possible, Giapo Grazioli, shared that recreating the dish to create the gelato flavor proved challenging, since Georgia died in December 2022, months before the business launched. Nevertheless, it was possible with Cher's help. "We were able to create it together, armed with only Cher's memory and an old, faded notecard with her mom's original cheesecake recipe," Grazioli said (via Allrecipes).

Interestingly, Cher admitted that what they made might not be the best recreation of Georgia's cheesecake recipe, even though she remembers it really well. "She's the only person who could do it right, truthfully," she told Allrecipes. Compared to the regular no-bake cheesecake, Cher's mom's version is an oven-baked cake with a whisked filling of eggs, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla, and a topping of sour cream, sugar, and vanilla extract. The notecard, written by her mom in 1962, indicated that after baking and assembling the cake, it should be refrigerated for 8 hours or more before serving. The result is a chilled, creamy, and dense New York-style cheesecake with a sweet and tangy flavor.