Cheesecake Recipes & More From Cheesecakes To Go

Aideen Cassidy had never set foot in Ireland but if she had, she could have been a poster maid for the Emerald Isle. The faintest auburn freckles seemed to be covered with a watery film of skin as white as skimmed milk with nary a touch of cream. Her wide-set pale blue eyes, clear and bright, were framed by fine lashes shades darker than her burnished mane of golden browns and reds, as if tinted by hair coloring labeled “tortoise shell.” She was tall, slender, and at 20, still more girl than woman.

She was a dreamer who did as she was told, who never made waves. She was a loyal friend to any who fell into her presence but she was not gregarious. She didn’t sleepwalk through school; she drifted. She wished she had goals but ambition was not indigenous to her character. Her parents loved her but made no demands on her. “There’s no hurry,” was their attitude. “Aideen will discover her passion in her own good time.” Secretly they were relieved that so far, passion had not blossomed into a romance. In the meantime, they savored her baking skills, especially the cheesecakes she surprised them with two or three times a month.

After high school when most of her classmates went away to college, Aideen tried a succession of jobs as receptionist, waitress, mother’s helper, sales clerk, nanny, short-order cook, dog-walker, personal shopper. She was dependable, competent, pleasant, and all her employers hated to see her go. “Come back, any time,” they said. “You’ve always got a job here!”

Then it happened. At about the same time her friends were receiving their college degrees, her interest was piqued by a talk show guest who waxed poetic about the benefits of winning a lottery. The winner rattled off the obvious advantages of buying a home for mom, travel, new car, but the most appreciated perk was the luxury of weekly massages. Aideen spent hours at her computer researching massage. She contacted area schools who offered accredited courses. While reading through their literature, one in particular appealed to her. She enrolled. Almost a year later, a fully licensed massage therapist, she was hired by a local gym where she had a massage table in a secluded room, low light, oils, scented candles, music of waterfalls, ocean waves, birdsong as in effect, an oasis. When the appointment book was clear, she wheeled her portable chair to the lobby and offered 15-minute shoulder massages. Thus word of her “healing touch” spread. Repeat customers included chiropractors, one in particular, tall and gangly, who after five years in practice, had attracted a large patient base. When he asked her how she happened to become a therapist, he saw a pleasant young woman become a beauty. She glowed as she spoke of the caring tenderness she felt for each body she touched, regardless of their appearance, because, “I feel a connection with their inner being. I can’t explain it,” she said. “I want to help them.” By showing Aideen how to reconfigure her hours at the gym, she agreed to join his practice six hours a week.

Do you think you know where this story is going? You’re wrong if you think she fell in love with the chiropractor. Her heart was captured by the owner of the gym, a burly fellow with a tension catchall near his right shoulder that she worked on, repeatedly, until it disappeared at about the same time he realized that Aideen had a way of making him feel good all over. When she brought in one of her home baked cheesecakes, he was a goner. Of course he married her! And he had a special chilled show case made to fit in with the other show cases at the lobby’s welcoming counter. There, along with power snacks and drinks, sweat bands, step monitors, t-shirts and sweat pants, is a small case that features Aideen’s cheesecakes, sold by the slice whose main ingredient is love.

Scarlet O’Cheesecake