Monday, 30 May 2011

Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake - Take 2

With the last bank holiday for a few months looking like being a long wet weekend, FB decided to spend a little time in MY Kitchen! I'm not sure how I feel about this; I don't like others in the kitchen when I'm cooking, and I certainly don't like Hubs leaning over my shoulder giving 'advice', when the last time he cooked was about 15 years ago! But FB can cook properly, and theoretically wouldn't need me around, once she had all tools and ingredients to hand. In the event it all went smoothly, with minimal input from me; she cleared up after herself properly, and in addition to other things, produced this gorgeous cheesecake for tonight's dessert.

I've made this Gordon Ramsay recipe before, but I had trouble swirling the chocolate topping, as the chocolate was too hot and liquid, as you can see here. FB works more slowly than me, and benefitted from my advice to melt the chocolate first and give it time to cool. By the time she was ready to add the chocolate to the top, it was thick enough to stay in place when piped, and she managed to make this beatiful spider's web design. In a slight change to the recipe, she used plain chocolate digestive biscuits for the base, to give an extra dimension of chocolate, and left out the almonds.

Once again, the cheesecake had a lovely clean flavour and light texture, while still tasting quite rich. It also didn't crack while cooling, cofirming it's status as my favourite baked cheesecake recipe!

In case the Times link ever disappears, I'm going to make a brief note  here of the filling ingredients and method - 600g cream cheese (full fat Philadelphia), 250mls sour cream, 2 eggs, 150g caster sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Beat everything together and pour onto a 23cm base, bake at 140C for 30-35 minutes. Cool in switched off oven, then chill.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

That is astonishingly beautiful - just gorgeous. Definitely something to cheer up a wet bank holiday!

Maria♥ said...

Cheesecake looks amazing and the your swirling turned out lovely!

Maria
x

Choclette said...

A beautiful cheesecake indeed - FB obviously gets her artistic streak from her mother.

MissCakeBaker said...

What a beautiful cheesecake.

cocoa and coconut said...

It's great that you found your favourite cheesecake recipe! The pattern on top is really gorgeous!

Unknown said...

Looks very professional! And I love a good cheesecake so this ones for the long list of 'must bakes'. Wish someone would come bake me something!

Alicia Foodycat said...

That looks so pretty! But I agree - not sure about other people using my kitchen.

celia said...

Great job, FB! Suelle, how nice to have someone else cooking dessert for you for a change! :)