Burnt Basque Cheesecake Zine
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Trick or Treat? I got a surprise for the end of October!
It’s happening! It’s finally happening. My first ever cookbook! It has been a dream of mine to write a book for as long as I can remember, and now it's happening. Well, a zine is happening. But I think of it as a first chapter to the big book of my dreams.
You eagle eyed patron subscribers have caught me talking about this and have been asking a ton of great questions. So yes, the zine is a reality!
I mentioned a couple of times on here, but never officially announced, my upcoming zine. So here it is:
The zine drops in the second half of October!
As we know, I have been working on a Burnt Basque Cheesecake zine with my partner Tom for months. Although the idea is a lot older! It may have begun as a pandemic hobby that continually found its place on the back burner, but now we are in the final stages of editing.
Of course I’m worried about hype!
For years now, many of you have been asking for my Burnt Basque Cheesecake recipe and it gave me a pretty obvious idea. Why not make a book of recipes? Fortunately my partner suggested a zine and presented some exciting ideas. And out of that, I got the idea to go with 10 of my favorite Burnt Basque Cheesecake flavors as well as sharing all of my secrets to get that perfectly creamy goodness.
I didn’t see dollar signs, I saw a chance to answer common questions and encourage everyone to try this delicious dessert at home.
You see, I hope this zine will allow my Austin clients (and everyone) to make their own Burnt Basque Cheesecakes since I won’t be able to bake for them anymore. I talk about community often, but truly all of you have been here and encouraged me for so long and all of you are so incredibly important to me.
The decision to slowly pull back from physically baking in order to canonize these recipes and offer them to my home base became just as important to me! Obviously, posting videos on social media has led to people all over the world asking me to share the recipe, but making a zine turned out to be the perfect way to do it for accessibility. They’re cheap, printable and easily used in the kitchen.
The zine isn’t a one off and it will not be just a digital born project. Once we sort out the move, we will focus on finalizing the print version and several physical variants that my partner is very excited about. He is talking about waterproof tyvec zines for rugged kitchen use, fancier archivally bound zines with bookboxes (ie, each zine is effectively a chapter in the book), post card photo recipes, and more.
What can you look forward to in the second half of October?
Well, let me tell you a little more about the digital zine first:
You’ll see 10 of my favorite recipes and most popular flavors with ingredients that should be easily sourced in many locations.
There are equipment lists and suggestions.
My personal cheat sheet of tips and tricks.
A few simple and clear photos for reference.
In addition, I will be sharing how-to videos or YouTube tutorials in the upcoming months!
These will serve as a visual aid to the cookbooklet, helping you understand what the texture of the mixture should look like as well as all the other steps in the Burnt Basque Cheesecake making process; making the molds, mixing the batter, filling, baking, getting that burnt look and taste, and more!
Of course all of these plans depend upon material availability and the practical business logistics of that side of things. However, we are so incredibly excited to finish this project during this upcoming moving period.
Tom and I made the zine together from scratch as they say. I developed, wrote, edited, copy-edited, proofread, and tested the recipes over the last 5+ years. Tom did the photography, photo editing, design, typesetting, and layout. We’ve both had to learn so much and re-learn so much. What began as pencil and paper notes is cleaning up to be something so special and beautifully simple!
How Can People Get It?
Donation based contribution—give whatever you can or want! Whatever funds we raise from the sale of the zine will go right back into more zine making.
All paid subscribers will get a copy of the digital zine!
We will have download links (epub and pdf) for all others on Itch.io
The primary goal of the zine is to get the recipes into the hands of as many people as possible, so we only plan to charge $2.
We want it to be super accessible, but we also want to be able to devote much more time and energy to building this project into multiple chapters and a variety of exciting physical editions.
If you want to support us further, you can also add a donation/tip during purchase—it helps pay for coffee, domains, and the millions of little operational things we had no idea about when we first started this!
Table of Contents
My 10 favorite Burnt Basque Cheesecake recipes. All recipes are gluten-free in case anyone is curious.
Making your own book from scratch to finish is no joke.
As an editor and food writer I am not new to the process of making a book from concept to final product but being a one man team (two man) makes things a lot harder.
This wouldn’t have been possible without my partner and his expertise as an artist, designer, art director, curator, and so much more. Tom and I love making zines and will continue to do so! We are so much more to learn and so much more to share. There will definitely be a borshch zine in the near future.
SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO MY 50 PAID SUBSCRIBERS:
THANK YOU! Thank you for believing in me and my work. Thank you for your support and community. For the first time in my life, I feel like I finally found my community.
I have never felt more supported in my entire life.
I want to thank each and every one of you for helping me write, research, archive recipes, create recipes, preserve, make videos, take photos, and share my ideas and thoughts with the world. Thank you!
Christa Halinen
Rainer Schuhsler
Jennifer Stewart
Elias J. Rodriguez Hernandez
Justin Walters
April McGreger
thvo82 (anonymous)
Jennifer Stewart
Sally Ekus
Navkuran Ghuman
Olga Vidersberga
Marissa Rothkopf
Elisabet Juan Roca
Teresa Finney
Devin Kate Pope
Jack Whalen
Kara Haupt
Zeineb Alieva
Christine Leonard
jjjdhunter
John Sebulsky
Mississippi (anonymous)
Jim Andersen
N. Wilhelms
Chuck Page
Ana Abele
Bohdan "Ben" Krewsun
Alison Silverstein
Russell Fedun
Barbara Blankenship
Selena Ho
Jenny Tan
Lissa Mattson
Alison Silverstein
Tanya Smith
Peter Nguyen
Mackenzie Kelley Smith
Victoria Miletta
Hannah Allison
Andrew Zachary
Emily Brodman
Congratulations on the zine. Thanks in advance for the Basque cheesecake recipes, but I enjoy buying the cheesecake from you and picking it up in person. I've tried restaurant BCCs and they're nowhere near as delicious as yours.
Olga, a friend gave me his e-mail address and wants to subscribe. My cousin posted from Instagram to FB. I will send the address to you.