Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Food production |
Founded | 1980 |
Founder | Eli Schulman |
Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois , USA |
Products | Cheesecake |
Owner | Marc Schulman, President |
Number of employees | 51-200 |
Website | www |
Eli's Cheesecake is a cheesecake company based in Chicago. Eli's Original Plain Cheesecake, which has been called "Chicago's most famous dessert", is made of cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a butter shortbread cookie crust. Since the introduction of Eli's Original Plain Cheesecake, the company now offers cheesecakes with various ingredients such as chocolate, fruit, or caramel, as well as other desserts like tarts, cakes, and tiramisu. [1] [2] [3]
Eli Schulman was born in 1910 on the West Side of Chicago. [4] In 1940, he started his first venture in the restaurant business with a popular coffee shop called Eli's Ogden Huddle. [5] He followed Eli's Odgen Huddle with Eli's Stage Delicatessen, where several notable performers dined.
In 1966, Eli's The Place for Steak was opened and the celebrities followed. [5] Celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Gale Sayers, and Henny Youngman all spent time dining at Eli's The Place for Steak. [6] During the late 1970s, Eli Schulman developed the original plain cheesecake as the signature dessert for Eli's The Place for Steak. The cheesecake represented the restaurant at the first Taste of Chicago in 1980, and it eventually became the festival's most popular dessert, with about 2 million slices sold as of 2005. [7] After being open for 39 years, Eli's The Place for Steak closed in 2005. [1] [8]
Eli's Cheesecake Company became its own company soon after the first Taste of Chicago in 1980 with a small North Side plant. [8] In 1996, Eli's Cheesecake Company moved to its current location in Chicago's Dunning neighborhood. [1] [8] The new location, called Eli's Cheesecake World, includes a 62,000-square-foot (5,800 m2) state-of-the-art antique bakery, bakery cafe, and corporate offices. [1] [8] Eli's Cheesecake products get shipped to customers all over the U.S. and to stores internationally. [9] Eli's is also available via a cooperation with Lou Malnati's through Lou Malnati's Tastes of Chicago, which provides Chicago-style cuisine nationally.
Eli Schulman's son, Marc Schulman, became president of Eli's Cheesecake in 1984 and has been running the company since his father's death on May 8, 1988. [4] Later in 1988, a playground across from the street from Eli's the Place for Steak was dedicated in Eli's memory and named the "Eli M. Schulman Playground". [10]
In November 2015, The Eli's Cheesecake Company launched their first cookbook, The Eli's Cheesecake Cookbook: Remarkable Recipes from a Chicago Legend. [11] The cookbook pays homage to founder Eli M. Schulman and includes 40 different recipes, including Eli's Cheesecake's classic cheesecakes such as Original Plain, Chocolate Chip, and Banana Chocolate, plus recipes from Eli's famous Chicago steakhouse, like Shrimp deJonghe. Aside from the recipes, the cookbook gives anecdotes from president Marc Schulman, wife Maureen Schulman, and a commentary from Chicago radio personality, Rick Kogan. A second edition of the Eli's Cheesecake Cookbook was published in 2021 with additional recipes and stories, including international family recipes submitted by Eli's employees. [12]
Eli's has made cheesecakes for four American presidential inaugurations. In both 1993 and 1997, it made 2,000 pound cheesecakes for Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremonies. [13] [14] In January 2009, Eli's produced a 500-pound cheesecake for Barack Obama's inaugural ball, and in January 2013, the company made a 500-pound cheesecake for Obama's Inaugural Staff Ball. [15] [16]
Eli's Cheesecake made a 2,000-pound cheesecake to commemorate the Burnham Plan Centennial on June 27, 2009, as well as the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Taste of Chicago and Eli's Cheesecake. [17] Eli's has also made cheesecakes over the years for events such as Hillary Clinton's 50th birthday, Disney World's 25th birthday, Abraham Lincoln's Birthday Bicentennial Banquet (which President Barack Obama attended), Chicago's 150th birthday and Illinois' Governor Pat Quinn's inauguration in 2011. [18] [19] [20] [21] In 2015, Eli's made a cake for the James Beard Awards Welcome Reception in Chicago. Eli's Cheesecake continues to be favorite at the Taste of Chicago. [3]
Eli's has also been featured on some popular television shows, such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Oprah Winfrey Show . [21] In May 2012, Eli's Cheesecake was featured on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer in a special called "Made in America". [9]
Eli's broke ground on a 42,000 sq. ft. bakery expansion in July 2022. [22]
The cuisine of the American Midwest draws its culinary roots most significantly from the cuisines of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas, and is influenced by regionally and locally grown foodstuffs and cultural diversity.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
A chocolate brownie, or simply a brownie, is a chocolate baked confection. Brownies come in a variety of forms and may be either fudgy or cakey, depending on their density. Brownies often, but not always, have a glossy "skin" on their upper crust. They may also include nuts, frosting, chocolate chips, or other ingredients. A variation made with brown sugar and vanilla rather than chocolate in the batter is called a blond brownie or blondie. The brownie was developed in the United States at the end of the 19th century and popularized there during the first half of the 20th century.
Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually refrigerated.
Gooey butter cake is a type of cake traditionally made in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a flat and dense cake made with wheat cake flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, typically near an inch tall, and dusted with powdered sugar. While sweet and rich, it is somewhat firm, and is able to be cut into pieces similarly to a brownie. Gooey butter cake is generally served as a type of coffee cake and not as a formal dessert cake. There are two distinct variants of the cake: the original St. Louis, MO Bakers' gooey butter and a cream cheese and commercial yellow cake mix variant. The original St. Louis, MO Bakers' gooey butter is believed to have originated in the 1930s. It was made with a yeast-raised sweet dough on the bottom.
Red velvet cake is traditionally a red, crimson, or scarlet-colored layer cake, layered with ermine icing. Traditional recipes do not use food coloring, with the red color possibly due to non-Dutched, anthocyanin-rich cocoa, and possibly due to the usage of brown sugar, formerly called red sugar.
Baumkuchen is a kind of spit cake from German cuisine. It is also a popular dessert in Japan. The characteristic rings that appear in its slices resemble tree rings, and give the cake its German name, Baumkuchen, which literally translates to "tree cake" or "log cake".
The Nanaimo bar is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the Canadian city of Nanaimo in British Columbia. It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut, and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. Many varieties exist, consisting of various types of crumb, various flavours of icing, and various types of chocolate.
The whoopie pie, alternatively called a black moon, gob, black-and-white, bob, or BFO, is an American baked confection that may be considered either a cookie, pie, sandwich, or cake. It is made of two round mound-shaped pieces of usually chocolate cake, or sometimes pumpkin, gingerbread or other flavored cakes, with a sweet, creamy filling or frosting sandwiched between them.
A Swiss roll, jelly roll, roll cake, cream roll, roulade or Swiss log or swiss cake —is a type of rolled sponge cake filled with whipped cream, jam, icing, or any type of filling. The origins of the term are unclear; in spite of the name "Swiss roll", the cake is believed to have originated elsewhere in Central Europe, possibly Austria or Slovenia. It appears to have been invented in the nineteenth century, along with Battenberg cake, doughnuts, and Victoria sponge. In the U.S., commercial snack-sized versions of the cake are sold with the brand names Ho Hos, Yodels, Swiss Cake Rolls, and others. A type of roll cake called Yule log is traditionally served at Christmas.
Chocolate cake or chocolate gâteau is a cake flavored with melted chocolate, cocoa powder, or both. It can also have other ingredients such as fudge, vanilla creme, and other sweeteners.
Doberge cake is a layered dessert originating in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., adapted by local baker Beulah Ledner from the Hungarian Dobos torte. Still popular in the area, the cake is made of multiple thin layers of cake alternating with dessert pudding. Very often the cakes are made with half chocolate pudding and half lemon pudding. They are covered in a thin layer of butter cream and a fondant shell or, alternatively, a poured glaze on the outside. They are normally made with six or more layers. Traditional flavors are chocolate, lemon or caramel.
Flourless chocolate cake is a dense cake made from an aerated chocolate custard. The origin of the cake is not clear. The dessert contains no gluten, which makes it acceptable for those with celiac disease, gluten-free diets, and during religious holidays in which gluten and grains are not permitted.
Dessert bars or simply bars or squares are a type of American "bar cookie" that has the texture of a firm cake or softer than usual cookie. They are prepared in a pan and then baked in the oven. They are cut into squares or rectangles. They are staples of bake sales and are often made for birthdays. They are especially popular during the holidays, but many people eat them all year. Many coffee shops and bakeries also offer the treats. Popular flavors include peanut butter bars, lemon bars, chocolate coconut bars, pineapple bars, apple bars, almond bars, toffee bars, chocolate cheesecake bars and the "famous" seven-layer bar. In addition to sugar, eggs, butter, flour and milk, common ingredients are chocolate chips, nuts, raspberry jam, coconut, cocoa powder, graham cracker, pudding, mini-marshmallows and peanut butter. More exotic bars can be made with ingredients including sour cream, rhubarb, pretzels, candies, vanilla, raisins, and pumpkin. The Nanaimo bar is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the city of Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Japanese cheesecake, also known as soufflé-style cheesecake, cotton cheesecake, or light cheesecake, is a variety of cheesecake that is usually lighter in texture and less sweet than North American-style cheesecakes. It has a characteristically wobbly and airy texture, similar to a soufflé when fresh out of the oven and a chiffon cake-like texture when chilled.
The old-fashioned doughnut is a term used for a variety of cake doughnut prepared in the shape of a ring with a cracked surface and tapered edges around it. While many early cookbooks included recipes for "old-fashioned donuts" that were made with yeast, the distinctive cake doughnuts sold in doughnut shops are made with chemical leavener and may have crisper texture compared to other styles of cake doughnuts. The cracked surface is usually glazed or coated with sugar.
Blueberry sauce is a sauce prepared using blueberries as a primary ingredient. It is typically prepared as a reduction, and can be used as a dessert sauce or savory sauce depending on the preparation. It can also be used in the preparation of the blueberry Martini.
Blackout cake, sometimes called Brooklyn Blackout cake, is a chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding and topped with chocolate cake crumbs. It was invented during World War II by a Brooklyn bakery chain named Ebinger's, in recognition of the mandatory blackouts to protect the Brooklyn Navy Yard.