Showing posts with label Cheesecake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheesecake. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 April 2008

Chocolate Cheesecake - take 2

I decided to make this cheesecake again, as a birthday gift to a dear, dear friend. This is how it turned out this time round.
Looks really different from the previous attempt! This time I managed to get the marble effect, by allowing the melted chocolate to cool a lot more than before. I didn't like the look though. Next time, I'll mix it all in.

Didn't get a chance to taste the cake, but I am told it was great, though a bit too rich, which I suppose it normal. Though, I'm wondering if it was because I used brown sugar this time instead of white sugar. Or perhaps by marbling the chocolate, the taste gets more intense. Anyway, it was fun to make! Happy birthday Val!

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

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!