Say cheese!

It looks just like any ordinary cheesecake with all the usual trimmings – blueberry, strawberry, and mango, to name some. But for Melvyn Isidro, the family’s cheesecake recipe is worth sharing with others. Thus, he spent long hours after work making the perfect cheesecake, shopping for ingredients in Quiapo and having enough drive to put his mom’s recipe in the consciousness of Filipino cheesecake lovers.

That was about three years ago. Now, Cheesecake Melliza has established quite a following among Glorietta habitués. Located at Food Choices in Glorietta 4 (it has another branch in Eastwood City in Libis), Cheesecake Melliza is oozing simplicity and homemade goodness. The first thing that would get a customer’s attention is its cheesecake sampler, consisting of five slices of the store’s best-selling flavors for curious customers who can’t make up their minds. These popular flavors, according to store manager Elaine Sunga, are blueberry, strawberry, mango, triple choco and all-cheese.

"Filipinos like to have a little bit of everything, so we thought it best to offer the sampler for the same price, like if you order a whole cheesecake in only one flavor," says owner Melvyn Isidro, who started his business with only a P50,000 capital.

But if the sampler is still too big an order for a customer, one can order the mini cheesecakes, cute little "mini-me" cakes. This one is great for those craving for something sweet but don’t want the guilt of "doing the deed," so to speak.

Melvyn fondly recalls how, as a young kid, he and his two other siblings would eat with gusto their mom’s cheesecake recipe. A teacher by profession, his mom got the recipe when she went to London.

Foodies all, the young brood found comfort in their mom’s favorite dessert. He recalls that his mom would make everything from scratch, from the crust to the cheese down to the blueberry topping. Unlike other cheesecake brands, which use gelatin as extenders, Melvyn proudly declares that their cheesecake is made with pure cream cheese and is baked. The result is a chunky, tasty, and not-so-sweet delight.

Customers can choose from 21 flavors. While around eight flavors are available daily, the rest can be ordered and picked up after a day or two. Some of the other more interesting flavors include Bailey’s, choco chip, coffee crumble, leche flan, crema de fruta, kiwi, prune and walnut, peaches and cream, to name some.

Another great thing about this store is that it also offers sugar-free cheesecake. That is, all one will get is the creamy richness of the cheese minus the sweet topping. "We started offering sugar-free cheesecake when we got queries from people, especially diabetics and dieters, " says Melvyn.

Obviously, these goodies weren’t enough for Melvyn for he later on introduced other desserts like brownies, cookies and muffins, some of which have curiously naughty names like Scandal Bar, Wet Dream (this one a rich and oh-so-moist dark chocolate goodness), and Revel Bar.

Cheesecake Melliza products are now becoming favorite tokens during weddings, especially the mini cheesecakes. It also supplies cheesecakes to four well-known coffee shops in the metropolis. Pricewise, says Melvyn, they are very affordable. "The idea to open up a cheesecake store came during a time when my friends and I wanted to eat out only to find to our dismay that cheesecakes cost P125 a piece," Melvyn says. This is the reason why he and his four other friends decided to venture into the cheesecake business. "I want to be able to reach out to a wider client base and introduce something that we used to enjoy as a child," he says.

Certainly, Melvyn has gone a long way from those sleepless nights when he’d finish baking cheesecakes in his small office below his apartment around 1 a.m. Gone also are the days when he would troop to Divisoria just to buy those white boxes to put his cheesecake orders in. Only one thing remains the same – his mom’s blueberry cheesecake recipe, which he was able to recreate faithfully and promises to share with more cheesecake lovers in the future.

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Cheesecake Melliza is located at Food Choices, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Makati City.