Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake

Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake

This delicious cheesecake is dense and incredibly rich; a little goes a very long way! Despite the use of cherry chocolate, it doesn’t taste like cherries at all and I think it would be fab with the tang of fresh raspberries and served with single cream to make it lighter. Well, lighter in terms of taste that is. Certainly not in terms of calories! No doubt this dessert is a treat but surely a little of what you fancy does you good?!

Ingredients

Serves Sixteen

Base

200g Digestive Biscuits, Crushed

100g Butter, Melted

Filling

500g Cream Cheese

175g Caster Sugar

3 Eggs

150ml Double Cream

200g Dark Chocolate, Melted

100g Cherry Chocolate, Roughly Chopped

Method

1.       Begin by preheating your oven to 140*C and lightly butter a 22cm spring-form tin.

2.       Your first job is to crush your Digestive biscuits. Personally, I hate doing this. It’s so boring and surprisingly time consuming but it’s worth doing properly as the finer the crumbs, the better your base will stick together. You can seal them in a plastic sandwich bag and whack them or grind them down with a pestle and mortar, like I did. Once you have a fine, smooth crumb, combine thoroughly with the melted butter (I melted mine in the microwave. Be careful to only heat it for a few seconds at a time or it will explode everywhere. Like mine did!) Firmly press the mixture into the tin, ensuring a flat, even base.

3.       Next, beat the cream cheese and sugar together in a large bowl using a fork. Melt the dark chocolate in the microwave, checking and stirring it every 10-20 seconds to make sure it isn’t burning. Mix it into the cream cheese mixture, along with the cream and chopped cherry chocolate. Stir quickly with your fork until it is well mixed and then pour the whole lot onto the prepared crumb base (being sure to leave a little behind in your bowl to lick clean!)

4.       Put the tin into the oven and bake for 1.5 hours.

5.       Once the cheesecake is firm, with a very slight wobble in the middle, turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to cool in the oven for about an hour. Remove it and either chill or serve at room-temperature.