Chocolate Cheesecake

The sour-cream in my refrigerator was expiring soon, so I had to find some way of using it, and what better way than to use it for some cheesecake?

Amazingly, I had most of the ingredients in my pantry already, which just gives an indication of how much baking I've been doing!

As with the London cheesecake, there were quite a number of steps to making this cake. First, we had to make the base from pulverised digestive biscuits (Thank God for food processors). I went a bit creative here and added some cocoa powder into the mix, since I was in a rather chocolatey mood. Second, we had to mix up the filling. There was actually a small problem here - Nigella's recipe calls for the melted chocolate to be swirled, and not fully mixed, into the cream cheese mix to create a marbled effect. However, my chocolate refused to swirl. It preferred to flake. Which I thought was a rather ugly look, so I stirred everything in for a uniformly chocolate look. Third, we had to give it a steam bath in the oven, as we did for the London Cheesecake. Finally, I added some decorative touches via chocolate ganache swirls on top of the cake, as I had some leftover ganache from before.

The result? A lusciously smooth cake. It was beautiful. A lot lighter than the London Cheesecake, and not overpoweringly chocolately (cocoa powder in base notwithstanding...). Quite perfect. I will be making this again really soon as a birthday present for my pal Val. I'm quite sure she'll enjoy it!