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!

chocolate cheesecake - what ricotta was made for

Okay, I’ve finally succumbed to the dark side.  I have signed up for facebook, bowing not to peer pressure, but to TDPS (teenage daughter pressure syndrome).  And you’re right.  My daughter is not yet  a teenager, but she is practising hard, and there is nothing more demoralising for someone barely 36 years young (okay 36 and a half…three quarters) than to be patted pityingly by a child who has it firmly settled in her mind that you are way too old ever to be hip, or to understand why social networking sites are important.  So fine, I admit I signed up so I could keep an eye on her, but she is blithely ignoring my friendship requests.  I think I should write a letter to someone at the facebook site…only who?  And signed what?  Desperately unhip mother seeking access to daughter’s life? 

Maybe I’ll just look around this facebook thing to see if all the dark predictions I made and conspiracy theories I foresaw are in actual fact, vaguely possible.  Ooh, this is so immediate.  Usually it takes ages to get a blog/comment conversation going.  Hmm, a lot of unknown people asking to be friends though.  Sorry guys, no can do.  I don’t pick up hitchers either.  My husband would kill me.

But lots of old blogging friends (you are all welcome) and quick access to some blog posts which makes things easy for lazy people like myself.  Hmm, easy to upload pics too, and a good place for non-foodie pics.  Okay, so it’s not all bad.  I think I’m getting the hang of this. 

Only, whoops, I seem to have spent most of the day pottering around in here.  No work on the new deli newsletter.  Barely touched a new blogpost.  Haven’t even looked at my synopsis for the publisher.  Insidious this… I knew there was a reason I warned Dakota about this.  Luckily, I have emergency back-up.  I can call a friend.  There is a chocolate ricotta cheesecake sitting on the deli counter, and the other me, the sensible one, is refusing to allow me to taste it until I log off from facebook.  Okay, just one last check…

Just kidding, this cheesecake is good.  It’s no contest.  I don’t know who started this chocolate polka dot thing.  I got it from Julie le Clerc’s  Little Cafe Cakes.  She says the concept is Maida Heatter’s.  As usual I’ve tinkered a bit.  Used my own pastry recipe and adjusted the filling to what I had in the fridge, but it’s still to die for and I make it often in one form or another.  So cheesecake 1 – Facebook 0.  But that’s today.  I’m sure we’ll go another round tomorrow.

For those of you who haven’t figured this out yet, I always post the recipes separately, to Vanielje Kitchen Cook Book (VKCB) in the sidebar.  This works out to be a lot easier in the long run when you are looking for a recipe and don’t want to trawl through all my stories or ramblings from months ago.  So what are you waiting for.  Open up my cookbook and get baking.  Ohh, and feel free to pop in and chat on facebook…

xx