For my final bake before Christmas I decided to make a cheesecake. Cherries always go so well with chocolate that I thought that would be a good idea. I love Morello cherries and have had them in the past, from a jar, where they are soaked in kirsh. So I thought that rather than buying fresh cherries I would use some of the kirsh soaked ones instead. I found a recipe on Citrus & Candy which I adapted to meet my needs.
I also made a cherry compote, so was able to use some syrup from that to stir into the chocolate batter for some added flavour, but any decent cherry jam will do just fine.
For the base I used some bourbon biscuits, which have a chocolate flavour and some chocolate cream in the middle. I was therefore a bit unsure of how much butter I would need to use to combine the crumbed biscuits, but 50 grams seemed to work fine.
The cheesecake turned out very well, so I was pleased with that. I cannot attest to how it tastes yet, since I will be taking it to family to eat on Christmas Day, but I am sure it will be very good.
Ingredients:
- 150g chocolate biscuits(I used bourbons)
- 50g unsalted butter, melted
- 170g dark chocolate, melted and allowed to cool a little
- 500g cream cheese
- 100g sour cream
- 135g caster sugar
- 2 tsps cornflour or custard powder
- 3 eggs (room temperature)
- 2 egg yolks (room temperature)
- 3 Tbsp cherry syrup(or cherry jam is fine)
- 200g cherries(drained completely if using tinned or jarred ones)
- Lightly butter a 20cm non-stick springform pan. Wrap the bottom of the tin well with at least 2 layers of aluminium foil if you’re using a standard springform tin.
- In a food processor, blitz the biscuits, butter and salt until clumpy then press into the tin so that it’s level-ish and compact. Refrigerate until required then put a full kettle on boil.
- Beat the cream cheese and sour cream in a food processor until smooth and free of lumps.
- Blitz in the sugar and cornflour then the eggs.
- Mix through the melted chocolate and cherry syrup and leave batter to rest for about 20-30 minutes to release any air bubbles.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F.
- Scatter the cherries over the biscuit base then pour in the cheesecake batter over the top.
- Place the pan inside a deep roasting tray then transfer to the oven.
- Carefully pour in the boiled water until it comes halfway up the tin.
- Bake for about 45-50 minutes or until the sides and top is just set but it’s wobbly and jiggly underneath.
- Switch off the heat then carefully remove from oven.
- Lift the pan out of the water, remove the foil then place on another tray.
- With a thin offset spatula, gently run it around the cheesecake to loosen the sides from the tin (cheesecake contracts as it cools so this will prevent it from splitting in the middle).
- Return the cheesecake to the oven, which has been switched off, for another hour.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
- Cover with plastic wrap.
- Place in the refrigerator overnight to make sure it is completely set.