The Cheesecake Factory is not known for serving health food. In fact, their giant portions can turn even healthy fare into things that you should think twice before eating. Many concerned with calories will ask their waiter to put half of the portion into a to-go box at the same time that the main course is served, which prevents the diner from overeating their pasta, salad, etc. The main thing to avoid there, unless you're not giving the least thought to what you eat, is the cheesecake. Although tasty, their massive pieces often have more than half of your daily calorie requirements. CSPI wrote, in their Nutrition Action Healthletter this month, that the Cheesecake Factory Godiva Cheesecake (pictured) has 1,000 calories and 41 grams of "bad" saturated fat. Unfortunately, they didn't enlighten the readers as to how much fat in total is in the cheesecake, but they did provide a colorful analogy to help picture just how bad it is: "it's like ordering a Pizza hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza - topped with 10 pats of butter - after dinner."

Yum.

If you're willing to toss your diet out the window for a few days (or want to share with a large crowd), you can order this cheesecake online. For a healthier cheesecake, try a vegan version or stick to a bite-sized tart that will give you portion control.

In this week's Wall Street Journal, the ever savvy Catalogue Critic took on one of the most popular types of holiday desserts, cheesecake, to see if a good mail-order one could be found. Cheesecake may not sound like the perfect seasonal dessert, but more than one company that they interviewed reported that holiday sales had "increased in the double digits" over each of the last few years, and virtually all said that November and December were their biggest months of the year.

Orders were placed at five bakeries and testers, including the executive chef of the Four Seasons, were enlisted to judge. They looked for "a firm outside, a creamy interior and a balanced flavor" in each of the plain/vanilla cheesecakes. Their two favorite cakes came from Eli's Cheesecake Company and Junior's. Eli's ($28) was rich and creamy, with a shortbread cookie crust, but had a lemon flavor that not everyone enjoyed. Junior's ($29.95) was picked as the "best overall," as it was creamy, not crumbly, and had a slightly moist sponge cake base instead of a graham cracker crust. They also noted that Junior's is adding 12 flavors to their holiday menu for anyone who wants more than plain cheesecake.

Incidentally, shipping was not a problem for the testers, as all the cakes arrived in pristine condition via overnight shipping, so the cost of getting the cheesecake to your door is probably going to be a bigger concern than what it will look like when it gets there.

For many, a cheesecake is the ultimate dessert. It is smooth, creamy and can even be flavored in a variety of different ways to appeal to almost every palate. The cake can also be dressed up to make a better presentation. For example, it can be tie-dyed for a groovy retro look or, like Suyin's mini cheesecake above, it can be made into a bullseye. The target pattern is made by layering different colors of batter in the pan before baking. Suyin used food coloring to tint her cake, but a more common method is to use chocolate and vanilla batters. Read on for more pictures.

For garden party desserts, we've had petit fours and a few cupcakes, and here's one more before we're off to watch the sunset: a lime cheesecake mini-tart.

There's nothing special about the cheesecake. It's a basic cheesecake recipe with lime juice and zest added for the lime flavor. Please, even though it's lime, it won't be green, and resist any and all urges to add green food coloring. There's nothing wrong with food coloring - just save them for dyeing your Easter eggs. The cheesecake is pretty enough as it is in its pale pale green splendor. Though most cheesecakes have a graham cracker crust, using a regular flaky crust is ideal for a mini-tart that has to be picked up with hands. Graham cracker crusts might fall apart.