by David Gustafson
Star Tribune Staff Writer

It's hard to nail down how many flavors of cheesecake Muddy Paws Cheesecake serves.

The bakery offers 170 flavors according to its website. But it has 171 if you count the spumoni, a recipe the chefs concocted just a couple of weeks ago from leftover pistachios and strawberry batter. By the time you read this, they might have 172 if they get creative again.

Regardless of the exact number, Muddy Paws Cheesecake makes many, many flavors -- more than any other cheesecake bakery in the world, according to owner Tami Cabrera Weinmann of St. Louis Park.

The bakery's most popular flavor is a simple raspberry swirl, but if you crave something exotic, you don't need to limit yourself.

If you want green tea cheesecake or peanut butter and banana, you can get it -- just place your order five days in advance.

Depending on the season, Muddy Paws also carry five varieties of pumpkin, or a candied sweet potato variety with white chocolate and pecans.

All the cheesecakes are handmade New York-style, full of cream cheese, sour cream, vanilla and sugar, with no flour added. Any cake can also be made lactose-free, sugar-free, low-carb, glutin-free or vegan -- with tofutti and a granola cereal crust.

For the first cheesecake-only bakery in Minnesota, business is sweet. Muddy Paws expanded in December, opening its first roomy sit-down restaurant with pasta, sandwiches and yes, plenty of cheesecake, in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. The bakery also has small storefront operations in Maple Grove and St. Paul.

"Uptown's kind of the vision I've always had for Muddy Paws but wasn't able to get to until this point, basically for financial reasons," said Weinmann, 37.

Weinmann grew up in Chicago, with cheesecake bakeries a short walk from home.

"I grew up thinking it was a part of life," she said.

But cheesecake wasn't a part of life in Minnesota, which she discovered when she moved here for a job.
After five years without finding a cheesecake bakery, "a lightbulb flashed and I thought, 'maybe I should do something about this,' " she said.

Weinmann tested her recipes on colleagues at the architectural firm where she worked. Eventually, she quit her job and rented out a kitchen by the hour. She opened Muddy Paws in 1993. Back then, she was happy to get two orders per week.

She had to spread what she calls "cheesecake awareness," trying to persuade customers to spend $25 on a dessert when they could get a $10 pie at Baker's Square.

"I definitely had arrows and bullets in my back all the way for the first four years, trying to get the point across of what a good cheesecake was," she said. "Now I don't have to do that anymore."

A few years ago, Muddy Paws was selling maybe 100 cheesecakes per week, Weinmann said. Now she employs 22 people, including four bakers, and they make 700 to 1,000 cheesecakes each week.

Despite that boggling number, Weinmann sticks to the old-fashioned method of cutting and depanning each cake by hand. She calls it "the love factor."

"We still consider baking and making bakery products an art form," she said.

Making a blemish-free cheesecake without cracks in the surface is a precise craft. Among numerous other factors, the chefs have to monitor the air temperature, softness of the cream cheese and even the weather outside.

"Even in the summer time, if it's a rainy day versus a hot, humid day, it can make a difference," Weinmann said.

Only about 5 percent of Muddy Paws' finished cheesecakes are flawed, and those are cut into squares and donated to charity.

Many of the rest find their way to weddings, a popular niche that accounts for most of Muddy Paws' business. And the others find their way to the paws of sweet-toothed Minnesotans who, until Weinmann showed up, didn't know what they were missing.

Maple Grove: 13631 Grove Dr., Grove Square; 763-425-7800
Uptown: 2528 Hennepin Av. S.; 612-377-4441
St. Paul: 740 N. Snelling Av.; 651-458-1625

Writer: dgustafson@startribune.com.