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I love cheesecake, and always have, but – as I discovered one rainy night in Wilderness – there is cheesecake, and then there is cheesecake. Aidan’s cheesecake is cheesecake.
Like 9/11 – but so much nicer
There are some things – the death of Princess Diana, the death of Chris Hani or Nelson Mandela, or 9/11 – that are so earth-shattering that you will always remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. Well, Aidan’s cheesecake is a bit like that – but so much nicer. I remember exactly where I was when I first tasted it.
It was a rainy Friday night in Wilderness, and I was wandering through the small market in the town centre with a fellow travel writer. We bought some cheese and sourdough bread to make an impromptu supper, and I gave in to the temptation of buying a slice of cheesecake as well. After we’d feasted on delicious bread and cheese, I stuck a plastic fork (it was 2006, we still used plastic forks) into the cheesecake, and took my first bite. I probably should have said nothing, but I couldn’t resist sharing, so I offered my companion, Don, a bite. (Do you remember the movie When Harry met Sally? Well, it was a bit like that, but Don is a man so it was not quite as noisy, and much shorter than Meg Ryan’s epic performance.) We immediately retraced our steps only to find that it had all sold out. That’s when I really regretted sharing. I went back home to Cape Town, dreaming about cheesecake, and it was more than a year before I managed to hunt it down again, after which I have made a point of keeping tabs on Aidan, and on where I can find his cheesecake. (Not in Cape Town, which is probably a good thing!)
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A means to an end
Having qualified as a pastry chef at the Cordon Bleu School in London, you’d think baking was Aidan’s first love. But it’s not. It’s just a means to an end. ‘I started baking so that I could afford to farm,’ he says. What really gets Aidan out of bed in the morning is tending to the pretty white Saanen goats that roam happily around on his 38-hectare farm in Hoekwil, and – of course – making delicious cheese from their milk.
He bought the farm and four baby goats in 2005, and reverted back to his chef training to support the goats, build up the farm, and get more goats. He makes an awesome sourdough bread, which pairs well with almost any cheese, but he needed a real money spinner. And, seeing as he was just down the road from the Lancewood Cheese Factory, he invested in a few buckets of full-fat cream cheese and started experimenting. Every cheesecake he made was good – after all, he had spent two years training as a pastry chef – but, after five attempts, he made a cheesecake that magically had a perfect silky texture with none of the stodge of a German or a New York cheesecake, but sufficient body to stand up for itself. And, one of the trickiest aspects of a cheesecake to get right, the perfect balance of sweet and sour – just enough lemon, not too much sugar.
You can’t improve on perfection
But you can expand it. Aidan made just the one – perfect – lemon cheesecake for years. Then he added a Belgian chocolate one to his string. This made life hard for me when I travelled through the Garden Route. I either had to choose between them, or buy two slices. I bought two. And then he added a blueberry cheesecake.
Where to find the best cheesecake in the world
The best cheesecake in the world is in the Garden Route, so it’s a perfect addition to a coastal holiday. The mother lode can be found at the new Merchant and Maiden restaurant in Hoekwil, and you can also get it at the Blue Olive and the Green Shed in Wilderness. But, be warned, other places in the area claim to sell ‘the best cheesecake’. These imitations are perfectly good cheesecakes but they are not the best!
And, on Saturdays, you can get the cheesecake (and the fabulous goat’s milk cheese and wonderful bread) from the Wild Oats Market in Sedgefield. (On the off chance that you are one of the three people in George who does not know about this fabulous market, you should consider making a Saturday morning pilgrimage.) And, of course, you can order a cake for a special event – or just because you want to – by calling Aidan on 072 427 3892.
I didn’t make this up
It sounds as if I am biased, but I’m not the only person who thinks Aidan’s cheesecake is the best in the world. Aidan’s cheesecake was awarded Best Baked Sweet Product by Eat in 2010. Okay – granted – they probably didn’t sample all the cheesecake in the whole world, but the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs (World Gastronomy Association) gave the cakes a special achievement in 2017. So, while there may be a small doubt that it is the very best cheesecake in the whole world, I would put money on its being the best cheesecake in a thousand-mile radius of George.
