Lovers of American cheesecake be warned: This local delicacy is nothing like the huge fruit-covered creations found in New York and Philadelphia. (The cheese of that name was first marketed for the making of cheesecake.) Of all the varieties made around the world, it’s closest to the German version made using quark cheese, but with some quite distinctive features.

Cheesecake was invented, we think, by the Greeks, with the physician Aegimus writing a book on how to prepare one (the Greeks use mizithra cheese from sheep or goats). But versions exist from Sweden to Japan, the differences being more significant than the similarities.

The cheesecake from the druivenstreek is a typical product brought out on feast days, when traditionally in decades past every housewife would prepare her own, taking it to the local baker to be baked (few homes in those days had an oven). It consists of a number of essential ingredients – apple compote, cream cheese or plattekaas and eggs – as well as a number of variable additions: rum, almonds, macaroons.

The base is dough, the cream cheese filling dense and creamy. When sliced, the cake should retain its shape. The topping is browned in the oven to a golden caramel colour.

The flavour of the cheese should, in the best examples, predominate. Plattekaas is a somewhat sour cheese with a chalky feel in the mouth and, though it is sweetened with sugar in cheesecake, that sour taste of the curds should still be present. The layer of apple compote provides a note of sweetness and tartness at the same time. Try out the more exotic variants by all means, but the purists will maintain that any addition to the basic recipe is a needless embellishment.

The stamp of approval from VLAM, the Flemish government’s agricultural marketing agency, has gone to seven bakers (the kaastaart is by far the best-selling item in all of the area’s bakeries): two in Overijse, three in Huldenberg and two in Hoeilaart.