It’s been a scorcher of a weekend. The temperature got as high as 31.5C around here on Saturday (which is 88.7F) which is far hotter than I ever remember it being in Britain before. It got as high as 37.9C down south on Sunday but that doesn’t count because I live up north. Anyway, it was plenty hot enough and far too hot for activity like mountain biking, although I did manage to get in a game of 5-a-side football that had me drinking litres of water for the rest of the day – it was damn hot.

So what better way to celebrate than attending a “dessert party”? My friend Torrie is a New Zealander. He’s tall, good looking, super-fit (can beat me both up and down any hill on a mountain bike), can dance like John Travolta, is well travelled (being a Kiwi), is a really nice guy and is an excellent cook. He’s also single so all you single girls out there have no excuses for not finding Mr. Right! Anyway, he spent most of last week cooking a variety of exotic desserts in preparation for over a dozen guests coming over and eating them. All we had to do was turn up and bring some alcohol.

I’d heard mutual friends mention his famous white chocolate cheesecake recipe before and how unbelievably tasty it was. I wasn’t sure – given than I don’t actually like white chocolate – but the enthusiasm with which it was described had me intrigued. And so, at 8.27pm on Saturday the 9th of August 2003 I finally got the chance to sample what, it turns out, is the finest cheesecake on planet earth. Bar none.

I said that I don’t like white chocolate and that’s true. I ate too many white chocolate buttons one time when I was a kid and I’ve never been able to touch the stuff since. In fact I start to feel ill just thinking about it now. I do, however, like cheesecakes. So it’s fair to assume that while I like cheesecakes, my dislike of white chocolate should mean that a white chocolate cheesecake isn’t going to be one of my favourites. But it was. And it now is. It’s really difficult (nigh on impossible) to describe what something tastes like, especially a dessert. It’s like describing feelings – you can only do it by using other feelings (try it with something like the pain of stubbing your toe).

Note that the cheesecake was only one of a number of highly addictive sweets that were on display including the richest chocolate cake ever (richer than David Beckham and Michael Schumacher combined). Anyway, I spent Sunday feeling somewhat ill, not being used to eating that much sweet food in one year never mind one evening. I did manage to take a large portion of the remains of the cheesecake in question home and between bouts of feeling sick I’d stuff down another slice of it. I told you it was addictive!

Anyway, I’ve got the recipe and I’ll be trying it myself soon – although I’m going to have to wait until my blood sugar level drops back to normal. I wouldn’t want to turn myself into a diabetic on account of Torrie’s White Chocolate Cheesecake…