African Vanielje on May 20 2009 at 2:12 am | Filed under: amazing cakes, baking, chocolate, dairy, sweet kitchen, vkcb
perfect pastry, perfect cheesy mix, dark chocolate - YUM!
This is not the cheesecake I learnt to bake at my mother’s knee. That cheesecake is a light and fluffy, lemonscented confection. This cheesecake is heavier, richer, chocolatey-er, and easier to bake. I have been making it a lot at the deli recently and as it has been so well received we keep baking it. The original recipe came from Julie Le Clerc’s Little Cafe Cakes. And she says the idea for a polka dot cheesecake came from Maida Heatter. Genius-whoever started it. Here is my version.
For the pastry:
Put
4 cups plain (cake ) flour
- 8T caster sugar
- 240g ground almond
- 500g chilled butter
into your food processor and pulse till grainy
Add
- 2 t vanilla extract
Mix
- 8 egg yolks:16T cold water
Gently work into a pastry.
Push into buttered, floured, loose based tins. This pastry makes 2 20-25cm tins. You can always freeze the one prepared tin, ready for your next baking day. Chill the other one in the freezer too, until ready to bake.
Preheat the oven to 180*C
For the filling:
Melt: 150g dark bitter chocolate and allow to cool
Cream together
- 300g ricotta
- 150g creme fraiche
- 100g cream cheese
- 1 golden caster sugar
When light and fluffy, add
- 1 t vanilla extract
- 2 large freerange eggs
and beat gently until all combined.
Take the pastry tin out of the freezer and grate a few hazelnuts over the bottom.
Bake for 10 minutes then remove and cool.
Take out 1/4 to 1/3 of the mix and fold in the melted chocolate.
Fill the cooled pastry case with the rest of the ricotta mix.
Put the chocolate mix into a piping bag with a large nozzle. Pipe big blobs of chocolate ricotta into the cake at regular (or random) intervals.
You can drag a skewer through the blobs if you prefer hearts to polka dots.
Lower the oven temp to 150*C and bake for 25 minutes (if doing small individual cakes) or up to 50 mins for larger cakes. The surface should be dry but not cracked and the centre should still be a little wobbly.
Allow to cool before cutting.
YUM!
Looks amazing and I like how you got the crust that high. I’m not too good with cheesecake baking so I’ll always favor the “easier” recipes. Still intimidated, though.
Jude’s last blog post..Morel Mushroom Pilaf
Jude, cheesecake is like bread, the more you make it the easier it gets. Still, if you find a good deli near you who makes it, that’s also high up on my list of domestic goddess talents