Chocolate Cheesecake

The most delicious cheesecake ever. Add fresh whipped cream and you have created a heavenly dessert. I've been baking this old school New York style cheesecake for almost forty years. The perfect dessert to serve at a dinner party.

Go to Recipe

This cheesecake will serve up to fourteen people.

Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees F

Grease a 9" springform cake tin

Ingredients:

1 1/4 Cups of Graham wafer crumbs

1/4 Cup of melted butter

8 1-ounce squares of semi-sweet chocolate

11/2 Pounds of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, at room temperature

1 Cup of sugar

3 Eggs

1 Teaspoon Vanilla

1/4 Teaspoon sea salt

1 Cup of sour cream, full fat

Method:

Mix Graham crumbs and the melted butter together.

Press into 9" 'greased' springform cake tin.

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler.

Remove and cool.

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth.

Add the sugar, vanilla and salt.

Add the eggs last and mix until just blended or you let too much air in the cake.

Gently fold in the chocolate and sour cream.

Pour into the springform cake tin. Bake for one hour at 300 degrees F.

Turn off the oven after the hour. Leave it in the oven for one hour.

Remove and cool in cake tin.

Note: There may be cracks on the top. Here's why that happens.

Even if you use a non-stick springform cake tin, you should grease the tin. Sometimes cheesecakes crack when they are cooling because some of the cake sticks to the side of the tin and it pulls on the cake.

Add the eggs at the last step and beat only until combined. Otherwise too much air will get into the batter from beating the eggs too much.

Place the cake tin in a water bath. A water bath is also called a Bain Marie.

Wrap the cake tin in foil just in case. Get a pan with high sides. A roasting pan works. Put the cake inside the pan and fill it with boiling water up to the sides of the cake tin. Bake.

Bain Marie explained

A bain marie is a cooking container filled with water in which another pan or dish is placed in order to cook food more slowly or with more moisture. It is different from a double boiler.

A double boiler is has two parts. The bottom pot contains the boiling water while the upper pot holds the food being cooked. The steam gently cooks the food in the top pot without burning. These are ideal for melting chocolate or egg yolks for Hollandaise Sauce.