2*52 Chocolate Cheesecake

Chocolate. 

I think we already agreed that there is always room & time for chocolate.

Also in cheesecake. Like this one:

Chocolate Cheesecake

Adapted from Leila Lindholm's Noch ein Stück (English edition: One more slice)

400 g (14 oz) whole wheat butter cookies (or graham crackers)

150 g (2/3 cup) butter

600 g (1 lb & 5 oz) cream cheese

250 g (8 fl oz) Quark (10%) (curd cheese)

120 g (2/3 cup) sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla sugar (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

4 eggs

100 ml (3.5 fl oz) heavy cream, liquid

150 g (1/3 lb) semisweet chocolate

3 tablespoons espresso

• Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F).
• Crush the cookies or crackers until you have (more or less) fine crumbs.
• Melt the butter, mix with the crumbs, and press onto the bottom of a buttered springform pan. Pre-bake for 10 minutes, let cool.
• Turn down the oven to 130°C (270°F).

• Mix together cream cheese and quark. Add sugar and vanilla (sugar). Add one egg at a time, then finish with adding the liquid cream.
• Melt the chocolate and mix with espresso. Add chocolate to half of the cheese mix. 
• Pour half of the white cheese mix onto base. Pour half of the chocolate-cheese mix on top. Add the rest of the white mix, and finish with the last half of chocolate mix. Make swirls with a toothpick.
• Bake for 85 minutes until the cake is completely set. Let cool and serve warm or chilled from the fridge.

My modifications:

None. But I did have a problem with mixing the espresso with the melted chocolate. Maybe you know what happens when you mix a liquid with melted chocolate: the chocolate clumps. I didn't really like that because those clumps were in the finished cake as well but I'm not sure what to do differently next time.

The taste:

Good! But - maybe due to the espresso-chocolate - the texture wasn't like my usual favorite cheesecake texture. I probably won't bake this again. But it wasn't bad, so please do try it yourself. And let me know if you solve the clump problem...

What is your favorite cheesecake? Plain or mixed with different flavors?