Title

A little blog about food with recipes, reviews, commentary, and honesty.

I also offer event catering and private chef services; check out Earls Barton Eats! for more details.

Friday 10 August 2012

Food Porn: Layered Cheesecake Bites

You must think I'm obsessed with making food that's square. Really I'm not, I make round food too and sometimes dodecahedron if the mood takes me. 

Recently every week I've been baking for T's colleagues because they're hard-working chemists and need sweet sustenance on a Friday morning. Baking bite-size delights in a rectangular tray and then serving cut into squares is the best way to feed a crowd like this. 

This recipe is for a New York style baked cheesecake, because frankly they're the best kind. 

Ingredients to make one batch in a 20cm x 30cm tray: 

600g of soft cream cheese
250g of mascarpone
225g of digestive biscuits - substitute for GF digestives if required
100g of unsalted butter, melted
2 whole eggs, plus 2 egg yolks
175g of caster sugar
4 tbsps of self raising flour - substitute for GF self-raising flour if required
2 tsps of vanilla extract
200g of milk chocolate

First preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan and line the tray with greaseproof paper, leaving an inch around the top to make it easier to lift out the cheesecake afterwards. 

Now the fun bit - smashing up the digestives! You can use a food processor on pulse, but I prefer to put all the biscuits into a large bowl and smash with the end of a rolling pin. This way you end up with little chunks of biscuit in amongst the crumbs and this gives the base a better texture. Plus it's a great bingo-wing workout. 

When the biscuits are crushed add the melted butter a little at a time and mix well. You should reach the consistency where if you press the back of a spoon against the biscuit it leaves an indentation. Then tip the biscuits into the base of the tin and press down firmly in an even layer. Place in the oven and bake for 5 minutes to firm up, then remove and set aside to cool. 

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, then remove the bowl from the pan and set aside to cool. 

In a large bowl beat the eggs and sugar together until smooth then add the cream cheese, mascarpone, vanilla, and flour. Beat together until the mixture is smooth and silky and then divide half the mixture into another bowl. When the chocolate is cool add into one half of the mixture and fold in thoroughly with a spatula. 

Tip two thirds of the chocolate mixture onto the biscuit base and smooth out into an even layer with a spatula. Then tip the vanilla mixture onto the top and spread out carefully into a layer; some of the vanilla will sink down into the chocolate but this is perfectly OK! 

Tip the remaining chocolate mixture in a line down the middle of the vanilla layer. Take a bamboo skewer and sink into the cheese down to the biscuit base. Then swirl the skewer around the cheese in circles, mixing the chocolate with the vanilla, in order to marble the top of the cheesecake. 

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the cheesecake has a slight wobble when you gently shake it. Turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake inside to cool for at least 2 hours; this will make the cheesecake dense and creamy. 

When completely cooled remove the cheesecake from the oven and cut into squares! 




No comments:

Post a Comment