Today is mommy’s birthday. Happy Birthday mamasita!

To celebrate, I worked really hard to convince my mother not to buy a sheetcake at the grocery store and convinced her I should make her cheesecake instead. (This was difficult, I assure you. Ha.) I’ve made this chocolate cheesecake many times, always with great reviews. This time, since we were adding candles, I decided to make something that would top the cheesecake so the candles wouldn’t melt it. In retrospect, ganache, which melts easily, was probably not the best choice, but it sure was a delicious one. The dark chocolate I used really went well with and was tempered by the sweet cheesecake.

Also, the eternal debate must be ended. Cheesecake: Cake, or pie? You decide, and tell me.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 c. butter, melted
• 1 package chocolate wafers (Nabisco brand) finely ground
• pinch salt
• 12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 Tbs butter
• 1 1/2 lbs. cream cheese (not lowfat! 3 8oz. packages) at room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 Tbs cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 6 oz. dark chocolate, finely chopped
• 1 Tbs. light corn syrup (although you could probably omit this)
• 3/4 c. heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 10″ springform pan with nonstick spray. Combine melted butter, salt, and ground cookies in a bowl, stir to combine. Press into springform pan. Bake for 7 minutes, remove from oven and let cool. In a double boiler, melt chocolate chips and butter together. (I had it clump up on me this time because I tried to cheat and do it in the microwave, which I can do sometimes with success, but I just put it in the cheesecake batter real fast before it solidified totally and it was fine. ) In another bowl, mix cream cheese until smooth. Add melted chocolate chips and mix until uniform in color. Continue mixing while you add 1 1/2 c. cream and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in cocoa until just incorporated. Pour into pan and smooth top.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 and continue cooking for 30 minutes. (No peeking during this time!) Turn oven off and leave cake in with the oven door ajar for 30 minutes. Remove, and let stand until room temperature. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

When all that’s done (usually the night before,) place remaining cream (3/4 c.) chopped dark chocolate, and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat until chocolate is melted. Let cool until “spreadable” and then spread it on! Then, eat what’s left in the bowl and tell no one.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 8:05 pm and is filed under sweets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.