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12 Toppings That Will Upgrade Any Basic Grocery Store Cheesecake By Melanie Andrade Oct. 21, 2025 7:40 am EST

While baking for my own café for over 10 years, I've learned an important lesson: Creativity often starts with the basics. Planning a menu that suits different tastes, budgets, and occasions can be as simple as changing an easy, standard dessert into something that feels fresh and exciting.

Cheesecake is one blank canvas that I love to experiment with. The smooth, creamy, almost-neutral base of vanilla cheesecake has an unobtrusive, gentle sweetness that lends itself well to several exciting interpretations. Over the years, my approach to "add a little something" without reinventing the wheel each time has resulted in some runaway hits. They have run the g

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