Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

This is pretty much a big Reece’s cup you can serve up as a dessert. The sour quality of the cream cheese cuts nicely through the richness of the chocolate and peanut butter, and I am LOVING the nutty base. I think the base would be lovely with even a normal vanilla cheesecake topping.

It’s a little bit fiddly to cover the filing with the topping without cracking the surface, but even if it goes slightly wrong, it will still marble a bit and taste delicious!

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate (plus a little coffee) Cheesecake

Its a miserable cold week in Feb. This the the antidote. It is chocolate on every layer, exactly what you need. It’s amazing – crunchy chocolate base, smooth chocolate middle, and runny chocolate topping. I added some coffee to the topping to cut through the chocolate just a little bit. 

Let's get this cake a cookin'

Now, I don’t know if I was just being stupid, but I originally tried to add melted chocolate to the cheesecake mixture to make it all chocolatey, but the mixture was so cold that the chocolate clumped and wouldn’t mix evenly at all. So, this is a second try with cocoa powder which works beautifully.

This does take a little bit of time to assemble in full but it is really worth it, and you can prepare it the night before and allow to chill in the fridge, so it’s a good party dessert!

The key to the amazing texture of this cake is cooking it in a water bath, which isn’t hard, just takes a little bit of preparation.

Chocolate and Sesame Yoyos

I love nutty, seedy flavours in sweet as well as savoury cooking. There is nothing more delicious to me than a cookie filled with hazelnuts, or a cheeky walnut in cake, and of course, pistachios in the mighty baklava.

I also have a massive vat of tahini paste that I am keen to use whenever I can.

I also love discovering new flavour combinations. 

So when this recipe fell into my lap, I was immediately enamoured! These are light little biscuits, studded through with sesame seeds, and stuck to eachother with the most scrummy sesame-cheesecake filling. This has opened up a huge new range of recipes to me, it makes me immediately want to make a chocolate-sesame cheesecake. The chocolate and sesame complement each other beautifully, and the creamy sesame filling is completely delightful.

Chocolate and Hazelnut Cheesecake

So, I found a recipe for “classic New York cheesecake” and I kind of have a pathological need to change up recipes to include my favourite flavours. And, you may have guessed, but my favourite flavour is Nutella. Without a doubt, every day of the week, I want to make things taste like Nutella. I think that's why I'd be especially terrible at Great British Bake Off - I would just do chocolate and hazelnut EVERYTHING.

So that’s what I did! Sorrynotsorry.

I was really impressed with this recipe, I think it must be the first cheesecake I’ve ever made where the top didn’t crack (SUCCESS!), and I have to imagine that that is due to the lower cooking temperature in the second half of the bake.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any nice photos of the inside of the cake because I took it into work and we demolished it! A good effort.

Mexican Style Cheesecake

The crack is *supposed* to be there, I swear!

Hello Mexico, hello desserts!

For me, the best part of a cheesecake is the buttery biscuity base. Which is why I kind of pretty much tripled the quantities here so I had a massive amount of it. Feel free to halve or even reduce the quantities by a third if you are the kind of person who eats a normal amount of base. I’m all about the base.

Alright, now that my shame is exposed, I should tell you about this bad boy. It is slightly adapted from a fantastic Mexican cookbook which was calling my name one day as I clutched a book token and was wandering around Waterstones. I’ve not made any of the desserts yet, but the description of the crack on the browned top showing the creamy fluffy centre had me intrigued. My cheesecakes always end up with a big crack down the centre, so I was excited for the prospect of a cake for which this was actually expected!

Anyway, enough chat, this cake is fantastic. Spicy and creamy and crunchy and YES please.

Makes a cake which could easily serve 6-8 greedy people

Nutella Cheesecake

Or, supermarket own brand chocolate hazelnut spread cheesecake. Cordon Bleu!

This baked cheesecake is very simple and utterly delicious. And, if you get the swirls done right, impressive-looking too! It's also easy to prepare ahead of time, as it needs to chill in the fridge before serving.

Now, I used to dislike cheesecake. It was a simpler, and less calorific time. Then I went to New York. And, well, do I need to go on? This recipe is very reminiscent of a white and dark chocolate cheesecake I bought in a little deli there (and pretty much ate right then and there on the street) and I'd been looking to recreate it, but with something that made it a bit different. Then I remembered that I would walk through fire for a spoonful of Nutella, and this cheesecake became a reality. 

Now, my favourite part of cheesecake is the biscuit base. So I may have kind of doubled the base relative to the topping. Feel free to half the base ingredients if you do not share my love of crumbly buttery biscuit. You sadist.

Baked Cheesecake, Christmas-style

A little slice of dairy-deliciousness

I have a confession to make.. I don’t really like cheesecake. I don’t like cream, I don’t like cheese, I hate cream cheese.

Until. I decided to keep the Christmas spirit going, by making this festive version of a baked cheesecake. Instead of digestive biscuits only, the base is mainly ginger cookies. I used IKEA’s Christmas cookies: pepparkakor. They are delicious. I have never baked a cheesecake before, and this is testament to how fool-proof this recipe is. This fool NAILED IT.