117 Is The Magic Number

St. Paul cheesecake baker Muddy Paws aims for world supremacy, one flavor at a time

Comments (0) By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl Wednesday, Jun 18 2003

...continued from page 1

Trish Lease

Baker Tami Cabrera Weinmann takes the (cheese)cake

Location Info

Map

Muddy Paws Cheesecake

7600 W. 27th St., Suite B2
Minneapolis, MN 55426

Category: Restaurant >

Region: Uptown/ Eat Street

0 user reviews	Write A Review

More About

In fact, most of Muddy Paws' business is wedding business. The Snelling storefront is more a place to come in and sample cake, drink free coffee, and think about the cakes of your dreams, while looking at photo albums of the cakes of others' dreams, than it is a traditional bakery. Actually, don't bring the family when you visit: If six people walked into the teensy shop, it would be like a subway car in Tokyo. (Prices: $3.75 a slice, or from $25 for a plain nine-inch cheesecake; it costs more for fresh fruit toppings or for one of those multi-layer extravaganzas.) The family will be just as happy with takeout, because, as Cabrera Weinmann points out, one of the many attractions of cheesecake is its sturdiness--that's why it's so popular on boat weddings.

I tried about eight of Muddy Paws' cheesecakes, and can faithfully report that they are just as cheesecakes should be: moist, plump, weighty, salty, rich, and, of course, crack-free, crust-perfect, pretty as discs of marble. To me, cheesecakes either taste like cheesecake, or they taste wrong, like chemicals, or chemical air, or lead, or parchment. These taste just right. The raspberry swirl, the most popular flavor after New York plain, is enchantingly subtle, with the palest clouds of pink run through, a bit of raspberry seed crunch on the tongue to let you know it's real, and a taste that's just exactly, exactly like a June wedding. Even the craziest cheesecake I tried, Jamaican Banana Rum, was as subtle as a breeze. If there was a platonic ideal of the cuisine of the postwar American Kitchen, these Muddy Paws cheesecakes would be it. Nothing too fancy, nothing too snooty, something just very plain, in 117 shades of comfort.