[Never Eat Your Heroes, Chapter 179: Corporate cheesecake]

We've all been here. What Liberty Bell Cream Cheese wants, Liberty Bell Cream Cheese gets. Working food stylists know this means one thing when it comes to cheesecake: a shaggy interior.

How to proceed?

First, recipe. It has to be a dense, NYC-style cheesecake. I don't know exactly what compass led the brand captains of Liberty Bell to land on "shagginess" as the defining visual texture of the most commercially desirable cheesecake slice, but see above. I'm sure there were focus groups. Spreadsheets built. Budgets depleted. Belts unbound. Corridors paced. Consultants consulted. Sleep forfeited. Dry-erase boards decimated. Friendships wrecked, marriages broken. One thing matters: move that cream cheese.

Second, temperature. Cold knife + cold cheesecake yields the greatest shagginess. Slice straight down; do not drag the knife from center to perimeter. Unlike a suave citrus or custard tart, shaggy cheesecake abhors a hot knife. You need a conundrum: a blade that has both a razor-sharp edge and the surface qualities of worn velcro.

As with all cakes, pies, and other cases where a wedge must be taken from a circle: plan for a sacrificial slice. If shooting video or film, each take may require an untouched cake or pie; account for prep time, oven bandwidth, material costs, refrigeration space, and transportation needs accordingly.

To touch up the side of a slice, artists' palette knives come in handy. Use an instrument, not fingers; body heat melts the shag.