Mini speckled chocolate cheesecakes

After last weekend cheesecake sisaster I decided it was time to try again to assuage my cheesecake craving and get the creamy hit that I was looking for. I've wanted to make a chocolate cheesecake for a while and after searching the food blog search etc I settled on Nigella's chocolate cheesecake recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess, but with a couple of changes.

This is a traditional cheesecake made with eggs and cream cheese and baked in a water bath, I decided to make individual cakes as this makes sure I'm not eating a mahoosive slice and saying it's just a slice (tee hee). I used crushed chocolate bits that I whizzed in the food processor as opposed to melting the chocolate and adding it to the mix to make a swirled cheesecake like the brownies I made before. I used ginger nuts for the base instead of digestives as I like the ginger flavour is brings to the cake.

I was delighted with the results, creamy and rich but with a bitter hit of chocolate and a lovely gingery flavour. I think my craving has been satisfied for now, moving onto something more exciting next which I've made already but will remain a secret until next weekend but just to tell you it was a dream to make and I love love love the new skill I've gotten though it too, dying to share with you all


Anyway, enough rambling here's the recipe:

125g biscuits crushed, ginger nuts or digestives work best
50g butter, melted.
500g creamcheese
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
150g sugar
175ml sour cream
1tsp lime juice
150 plain choclate, melted.

Heat the oven to Gas 4/180 and boil a kettle full of water.
Process the biscuits and mix with the butter, put this into the bottom of a 20 cm springform tin or 6 individual moulds if you have them, and chill this while you make the creamcheese mix.
Whisk the creamcheese until it's smoothe, add the sugar and then the eggs one by one whisking each one in well before you add the next.
Add the sour cream and lime juice.
Fold in the chocolate bits and pour the mix into your tin.
Put your springform tin into a large roasting tin and fill the roasting tin with water until it comes 2-3 cm's up the sides of the springform.
If using a 20cm tin bake for an hour, if using individual moulds approx 20 mins.
Sit on a rack to cool and dust with icing sugar when ready to serve.

This was gorgeous, creamy and chocolatey and bitter all at the same, definitely one to make again. Hope you enjoy it if you try it

A very disappointing honey cheesecake

My name is Rachel and I am a honey addict!!! I love honey and would eat it on toast for 3 meals a day. It has a much rounder, smoother flavour than sugar and makes normal things like whipped cream just a touch more exotic. Because of this I have wanted to try the honey cheesecake from Bill Granger's Open Kitchen for as long as I have this book and as I've been thinking about cheesecake for weeks decided this weekend was the perfect time to try it. It's also been a while since I've featured a Bill recipe here. Alas, I was wrong!

This cake is made of ricotta and eggs, no creamcheese, no cream, no marcarpone. Now perhaps it was the quality of my ricotta which was some brand from Tesco and not the lovely ricotta from a deli that Bill always has on his programmes, perhaps not. The recipe was only slighty tinkered with which means I left out the marsala soaked raisins as bits in cheesecake upset me on a number of levels, perhaps not. Perhaps it's just the cake itself (which the husbag assures me it is ;-)), perhaps not.

The texture of the cake is slightly grainy, nearly like that of cottage cheese when you bite it - Not. Nice. At. All. Cheesecake should soft and smooth and almost mousse like in texture, and while this one manages to look delicious and soft and smooth, it's not!!! Boo to that I say!!!!


Here's the recipe should you want to try it, it does look pretty and I will definitely make honey flavour cheesecake again but not with ricotta!!!

60g sultanas (I didn't use these)
60ml marsala or cold weak tea (or these)
55g caster sugar
6 large eggs
finely grated zest of 1 orange
4 x 250g tubs of ricotta (or 1kg), mashed slightly and drained if it's got a lot of liquid in the tub as I did above.
90g honey

Preheat the oven to Gas 2/3, 160. Soak the sultanas if you're using them in the marsala/tea for 30 mins while the oven is heating.

Put the sugar and eggs in a mixer and beat for 5 mins until light and foamy. Drain the sultanas and fold through the egg mixture with teh zest, honey and ricotta.

Pour into a 9cm springform tin and bake for 80 mins or until golden. Allow to cool in the tin and serve with berries.

P.S check out the lovely sugar paste roses that my sister in law made for our wedding cake 2 years ago, still perfect and as hard as rocks. Thanks Jen!!! Rx

Daring Bakers Challenge 2 - Cheesecake Lollipops

So this is my second month as a Daring Baker, and to be honest I think it hasn't gotten off to a very good start!

I intended to make these cheesecake lollipops 2 weeks ago and it didn't happen due to being out on the lash for my birthday. I intended to make them last week and it didn't happen due to extreme illness in the form of a crazy virus!! So this weekend was my last chance - late in the day but thankfully the cheesecake was a breeze to make taking about 50 minutes to do it's thing in the oven and with my history in cheesecakes I wasn't overly positive when it went into the oven but came out very well and is definitely be a recipe I use again as I loved the texture of the finished cake. I'm so glad I didn't have the problems with it some other people did with the cheesecake not setting as this would have most likely ended with me not making a second one and completing the challenge.

After couple of hours in the fridge the cheesecake was ready to form into balls, overnight in the freezer and the balls were ready to cover with chocolate, this is the finished product and as I write this I am STILL singing the Chocolate Salty Balls song from South Park - classy wha??????


So this months challenge was picked by Deborah from Taste and Tell and Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms and is from a book called from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor which I've never heard of before but if this recipe is anything to go by the recipes in it are yum and fun!

I haven't given the full recipe as it's on Taste and Tell but I couldn't recommend this enough and if you don't want to make the pops then just try the cake. I made half vanilla and then I added some lemon extract just to change it up, I think I preferred the lemon as it was fresher with the chocolate but the vanilla tasted like ice-cream which was good aswell and the husbag loved.

Cheesecake Topped Brownies

So to carry on the lucious chocolate theme and also because I'm seriously back on the diet wagon and torturing myself with food I can't have I want to post these as I made them last weekend and they were amazing!!! I got this recipes AGES ago from La Tartine Gourmande who adapted the recipe and had in turn got it from Epicurious, I'd wanted to make these for ages but never got around to it and Paddy's weekend seemed like as good a time as any!

These are DIVINE!!!! I am in love with them and since they were all devoured I've been thinking about the lovely cheesecakey goodness on the lovely rich chocolate base. I wanted to eat them all myself but finally saw sense and only ate a few (read about 5 here). Also this recipe was in cup measurements, the original is here on Epicurious and another above on La Tartine Gourmande, I weighed everything but please remember it's approximate in case it doesn't work out
Here's what you'll need:

For the Brownie Batter:

• 3 oz 70% dark chocolate
• 100g flour, sifted
  
• 4oz butter, diced
• 165g caster sugar
  
• 2 large eggs
• Pinch of salt
  

For the Cheesecake Batter:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
  
• 1 large egg yolk
• 75g caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350F/180C/Gas 4 and line an 8 inch square tun with buttered parchment.
Mix all the cheesecake ingredients together and set aside
Melt the chocolate and butter in a double-boiler. Let slightly cool.
Beat together the eggs and sugar with a pinch of salt until light and pale in color.
Add 2 tbsp chocolate first, then fold in the rest of the chocolate, keeping the mix as light as possible.
Sprinkle the flour on top, and fold in delicately.
Pour the chocolate mix into the pan.
Add the cheesecake batter on top and make a swirly design in it using a fork or knife.
Bake for 30 mins, at this point the brownies will be slightly gooey still. If you prefer them more cooked, increase the cooking time by 5 min or so.
Let these cool in the tin before cutting them, you should get about 16 out of this recipe

Enjoy!!!!

Just not destined to make cheesecake!!!!!

This weekend I made Laura's Zest for Life cheesecake from EatDrinkLive. And guess what I failed!!!!!!!

The making was fantastic, I even made homemade lemon curd, I assembled everything and put it in the fridge last night at 10. I went down stairs this morning at 10.30 and removed the springform part of the tin and IT COLLAPSED!!!!!!! I am devastated!!! This is the second cheesecake I've made in a month that hasn't worked!!! What am I doing wrong??? Am I just not destined to make cheesecakes???? Boo hoo hoo!!!! Here's the pictures of the making so you can see.......................