October 07 Josephina Victoria Occhiuto's Birthday

With Hollywood's' penchants for remakes, they may want to consider a remake of Barbra Streisand's Funny Lady (1975) about Fanny Brice and Billy Rose. Joy Behar would fit the role perfectly. After marrying and divorcing Joe Behar, Joy gave up her teaching career to be a stand-up comic, and parlayed her sharp tongue and wit to earn an occasional spot of TV's The View in 1997 after Barbara Walters saw Joy's performance at Milton Berle’s 89th birthday tribute. Soon she was promoted to be one of the hosts as was predicted in the Bible in Psalm 30:5

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Joy's' acerbic wit on The View started to make headlines especially when directed to one of her then co hosts, Star Jones. One of their most memorable exchanges occurred when Star began go on and on about her recent breast implants, and Joy cut her off stating , "OK, Star. That's enough about you. On to us. Bye. Keep your [breasts] perky!" Star shot back "Even today, you are still a bitch," before ABC censors cut the feed. Jones eventually walked off The View in a huff.

Joy's fans love her in-the-face interview style. When Joy interviewed some the horn dog boys of MTV's Jersey Shore, she asked them “Do you use condoms?” When they answered "Yes," she pursued her safe-sex advocacy further with “And in the hot tub? Because, you know, the, uh, thing can come off in the hot tub.”

She soon began to be a popular fill-in guest host on CNN's Larry King Show. With her constant high ratings, CNN offered her her own nightly show on HNN, eponymously titled The Joy Behar Show, in the same time slot as Larry's. Joy soon began to occasionally beat Larry in the ratings. So her fans had Joy in the morning and Joy at night .

Joy's fuedette with Star came full circle when Star appeared on The Joy Behar Show in April 2011 to promote her book Satan's Sisters about fictional TV talk show "The Lunch Club," obviously patterned after the The View in which Star's doppelganger Maxine thinks to herself: "It was time to let these privileged bitches know how their croissants were buttered every friggin' morning."

So to help celebrate this funny lady's birthday, we could have taken Star's suggestion and made some croissants, but instead we followed "Weird Al" Yankovic's musical advice.

Sometimes you feel like a nut
Sometimes you don't
Almond Joy's got nuts
Mounds don't

and make an Almond Joy Cheesecake. While you are enjoying the joyful dessert, you can watch Joy in her favorite film role as
Marilyn in Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) unless some savvy Hollywood producer takes our advice and casts
Joy in a new production of Funny Lady. Possibly "Weird Al" Yankovic could play the Billy Rose role.

Almond Joy Cheesecake

Ingredients

Crust

1&1/4 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/4 tsp salt
4 TB unsalted butter, melted

Filling

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup cream of coconut
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Wrap outside of 9-in springform pan tightly with two layers of aluminum foil.
2. Make crust: In a bowl, mix graham cracker crumbs, almonds and salt with a flexible spatula.
    Stir in melted butter until dryingredients are lightly moistened. Press mixture into bottom of
    a 9-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack Leave foil on.
3. Make filling: Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat cream cheese and sugar until well
    combined and ligh (about 2 minutes). Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl and beat again
    until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again.
    Beat in vanilla, cream of coconut and salt. (Pour remaining cream of coconut into a small
    bowl, cover it with plastic and refrigerate to use later in topping.) Pour filling onto crust.
    Transfer springform pan to a roasting pan and fill the roasting pan with hot tap water until it
    reaches 1 inch up sides of springform pan.
4. Bake for 1 hour, until filling is set but still a bit jiggly in center (it will firm up as it cools). Take
    springform pan out of roasting pan and remove foil. Let cake cool on a wire rack for 1 hour.
5. Lightly cover cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until cold and firm, at least 6 hours.

Serves 12