Kusanagi Cheesecake

So there I was, sitting in a strawberry cinnamon Danish induced daze, surrounded by all of these strapple danishes and strapple cinnamon cookies. My will was almost completely broken and I had almost given up mixing altogether. When, in my highly receptive and broke state, I had a fleeting "what if" thought.

What if I embrace the strawberry ripe, instead of trying to hide it? Wear my hatred on my sleeve per say. What if I paired it with something that would accent it instead of mask it all but the sweetness of the EM? Fucking cheesecake.

A strawberry cheesecake topped with cinnamon baked apples.

I chose to use ripe at 4% because the flavoring (as you know) is weak and I needed it to last long enough for the steeping of the rest of the flavorings. I used JF Fuji at 0.5% because I needed to find the percentage where the Fuji was just light enough to be perceived as a "topping" but still be there and not be overwhelmed by the cheesecake. Any higher and the Fuji is present throughout and any lower it is lost in obscurity. CAP CDS, my arch nemesis, is at 0.5% as well. I needed to find a percentage where the cinnamon would come through lightly and play with the apple and cheesecake but not so much to where the cheesecake tasted like it was a yeasty strawberry cinnamon mess. Any lower than 0.5% and it disappeared in the mix.

Some would say CAP NY Cheese Cake is a better, more authentic cheesecake than the TFA variant I chose, but I've always found TFA CGC to go especially well with strawberry and have a fuller mouthfeel. It just needs a little help fleshing itself out. So I used my other 2 free ingredients supporting the cheesecake.

TFA CGC @4% because I needed that full bodied cheesecake flavor. Below 4% you get a creamy mouthfeel but it doesn't quite taste like a cheesecake anymore. More than 4% and you are playing with fire, the flavoring becomes a balancing act over a sweaty socks pit. FW Graham Cracker, I chose this over its more popular cousin (TFA GCC) because I get less of a cinnamon note from this than the GCC. CDS is dishing out all the cinnamon my body can handle in this recipe so I wanted to avoid more if at all possible. At 1% FW GC provides a little more crust to the CGC while also giving the cinnamon something besides Fuji to latch onto, evening out the CDS so it's not as concentrated and overpowering in one area. And finally the standard quirky ingredient, TFA Coconut. This flavoring is added in to provide a sweet creaminess to the cheesecake. While being low enough that it doesn't consume the profile and make it a coconut vape, it's high enough to add a unique sweetness to the cheesecake and enhance the creamy texture. I highly suggest playing with coconuts in creams at low percentages if you haven't already.

Altogether what you get is a cheesecake base flavoring throughout the vape with the sweet creamy coconut. Strawberry prominent on the inhale giving way to a cinnamon apple graham cracker exhale.kind of reminiscent of the order you would taste a recipe like this if you were eating it with a fork. Steep it 5 days to allow for the cheesecake to settle in, strawberry to calm down a little, and Fuji/CDS to properly place itself in the recipe.

After thought: I believe that if I were able to use different flavorings and omit some require (I'm looking at you CDS) I would have been able to better obtain the desired profile. I've also dabbled in adding .25% EM, but I think there is already enough EM with the strawberry ripe and adding it for sweetness is pretty unnecessary with the coconut. Even though I didn't hit the profile as close as I could, the vape is enjoyable (to me) and I will probably work on the recipe sans restrictions at a later date. Enjoy!