The recipe on this site is an independent recreation. These are Anne Burrell’s published cookbooks — the real thing, in the chef’s own words.
Cook like a rock star (2011)
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Anne Burrell beat Bobby Flay with cheesecake on August 25, 2016.
We are writing this in May 2026. She has been gone for almost a year. She died on June 17, 2025 — sixteen days after her wedding, three months before her sixty-second birthday. She left behind a husband, a daughter, twenty years of Food Network appearances, and the entire mentorship lineage of Worst Cooks in America, which she co-anchored for fourteen seasons.
Her cheesecake is the simple kind: cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, graham crust. She finished it with a strawberry compote because August in New York is when strawberries are at their flattering peak. Bobby brought a Basque burnt cheesecake — the trendy one, with the dark scorched top.
The judges chose hers.
We are not going to do a joke here.