Double chocolate cheesemoussecake

Another week in May, another birthday – this time it’s the Caked Crusader’s Brother (CCB) who, in his subtle way, made it quite clear that he wanted a chocolate cheesecake.

I feel like I let him down a bit as this definitely wasn’t a purebred cheesecake; it had a mousse-like texture but the unmistakable tang of a good cheesecake. For texture, I added some chocolate chips but these are optional. It would make a good dessert as it was rich but also light in texture.

The base uses chocolate digestives and I remain adamant that hobnobs make a better base, but the CCB was most insistent that I use digestives as he likes the hint of saltiness they provide.

I know I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll repeat myself – there really is no need to melt the butter when you add it to the biscuit crumb base. If you put the biscuits and cold butter into the food processor at the same time you get a lovely smooth base and none of the greasy hot butter seeping out into your fridge! I find it makes the base a nice consistency.

The cheesemoussecake has chocolate chips in it, but also marbling provided by a rich dark chocolate ganache. You can see the different colours in these slices:

This wasn’t the easiest cake to cut...in fact I had a bit of a disaster. I’m not the world’s most confident cake cutter anyway so something like this makes me go to pieces somewhat. I include the following picture; the slice was cut by the CCB and he returned from the kitchen with – it must be said – a rather smug expression, extra proud that he’d kept it upright on the plate!

Happy birthday CCB!

Ingredients

For the base:
125g chocolate digestives - I used milk chocolate
75g unsalted butter

For the filling:
4 gelatine leaves
60ml milk
500g cream cheese – I used Philadelphia
110g caster sugar
2 eggs, separated
250ml double cream, plus 2 tablespoons extra
150g dark or milk chocolate – I used Green and Blacks milk chocolate which is 34% cocoa content and like a halfway house between dark and milk
100g chocolate chips – use dark, milk or white. I used milk
100g dark or white chocolate – if you make a dark chocolate cheesecake use white for this as it provides the marbling; because I made a milk chocolate cheesecake I went for dark

To decorate: chocolate decorations of your choice

Method

Use a 20cm round pastry ring (make sure it’s quite deep) or remove the base from a 20cm springform deep baking tin and use that. Place it on your serving plate and line the sides with a ring of baking paper.

Start by making the base: place the biscuits and butter into a food processor and blitz until you have fine crumbs. Alternatively, melt the butter and break the biscuits by placing them in a bag and crushing with a rolling pin. Tip the crumbs into a bowl and stir in the butter.
Press the crumb mixture onto your plate ensuring that you press it right up to the edge of the pastry ring.

Refrigerate.

Now make the cheesecake: place the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water until they soften.
Place the milk in a saucepan and heat until nearly at boiling point. Remove the pan from the heat and, when you’ve squeezed all the water out of the gelatine leaves, whisk them into the hot milk until dissolved. Put to one side.

Beat the cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks until smooth.

Beat in the cream.

Beat in the melted 150g chocolate and gelatine mixture.

Stir in the chocolate chips, if using.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until at the soft peak stage.

Fold the egg whites into the cheese/chocolate mixture.

Pour into the prepared pastry ring and level out over the biscuit base. Put back in the fridge.

Melt the 100g of chocolate and stir in the double cream.

Retrieve the cheesecake from the fridge and spoon the melted chocolate in a pile on the middle of the cheesecake. Using a skewer swirl it into the cheesecake so that you get a marble/feathering effect. This is why it’s best to use a contrasting colour chocolate.

Refrigerate overnight and, before serving decorate as desired.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

Eat.