Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

I’ve been playing around with cakes lately and I decided to give my hand a try at making a cheesecake. The idea actually came to me when I decided to make one for a party I’m throwing, but I wanted to try it out on the guinea pigs first (aka Jesse and his co-workers). I knew it shouldn’t be too hard, so I wanted to attempt something different. Chocolate and raspberries are really good together and I didn’t see a reason why they couldn’t be good together in a cheesecake. So I started looking around and came across a few recipes that I liked – Graham Cracker Pie Crust, Chocolate, Almond, and Raspberry Cheesecake, and Raspberry Sauce – and I ended up using these recipes as a starting point for the recipe I have below.

The recipe itself is pretty easy, but time consuming. The most time consuming part was crushing the graham crackers and melting the pound of chocolate (thank you Jesse for doing this part); however, once you get over this hurtle, the rest is pretty standard baking.

Once we got all the components put together, the cheesecake itself is pretty good although I am changing the amount of extract. You really couldn’t taste the raspberry in the cake. I’m not crazy about the raspberry sauce on the cake. I’m not sure if it’s the combination of the two together or if the sauce needs more work or a different recipe entirely needs to be used. I’ll be interested in peoples thoughts.

Here’s the recipe with my few changes…

Chocolate Graham Cracker Pie Crust:
For the pie crust, I used the above recipe, but I did change a couple of the measurements. Since I’m making a cheesecake and my springform pan was 10″ instead of 9″, I increased the amount of graham crackers to 2 cups and the butter to 1/2 cup. I didn’t change the amount of sugar only because I am making a chocolate cheesecake and it should be rich enough without adding more sugar.

Ingredients:
2 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
  2. Mix together graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter until well-combined.
  3. Press mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate or tin.
  4. For baked pies, preheat oven to 350 F and pre-bake crust for 7 to 9 minutes. Cool before filling. For no-bake refrigerator or freezer pies, no baking is necessary.

Chocolate Cheesecake:
When I found this recipe, I was debating on adding the raspberry liqueur to the cheesecake and just relying on the raspberry sauce for the berry taste. But then it would have been a chocolate cheesecake with a raspberry sauce and that isn’t what I really wanted, but I didn’t want to use the liqueur. When I found the raspberry extract, I went hunting for a conversion ratio and found one – Raspberry Liqueur to Raspberry Extract – 2:1 ratio (e.g., 2 tbsp’s Liqueur, 1 tbsp extract). So instead of using the 2 tbsp of raspberry liqueur, I changed it to 1 tbsp raspberry extract. Either works fine, it just depends on which you want to use.

One thing I did learn from making this, you cannot leave a cheesecake out over night to cool before refrigerating it. Since I made the cheesecake after Ian went to bed, it didn’t come out of the oven until well past midnight. So instead of waiting up another 45 minutes just so it could cool before putting it in the fridge, I covered it with a towel and went to bed; with the intention of putting it away in the morning. Well, when we woke up the next morning, my cheesecake had a little gorge in the middle of it. It doesn’t seem to have affect it, but it’s not something I’m going to do again.

Ingredients:
1 lb milk chocolate, chopped
4 – 8oz pkgs cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/3 cup milk
2 tbsp raspberry extract
4 eggs
1 egg yolk
Sifted powdered sugar (optional)
Sifted unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
Fresh berries (optional)

Directions:

  1. Melt 1 pound chocolate in a heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly; cool. For tips on melting chocolate, I would check out Hershey’s guide, it’s the one I use.
  2. Beat melted chocolate, cream cheese, the 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1/3 cup milk, and extract in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium to high speed until combined. Add whole eggs and egg yolk all at once. Beat on low speed just until combined.
  3. Pour filling into the nut-lined springform pan. Place the pan in a shallow baking pan on the oven rack. Bake in a 350 degree F oven about 55 minutes or until 1 to 2 inches of outside edge appear set when shaken gently.
  4. Remove springform pan from baking pan. Cool cheesecake in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Use a small metal spatula to loosen cheesecake from sides of pan. Cool 30 minutes more. Remove sides of pan. Cool 1 hour; cover and chill at least 4 hours.

Raspberry Sauce:
So I did some of the directions a little backwards with this one. Instead of mashing the raspberries through a sieve/strainer, I started heating them with the sugar first and then once they became pliable, then I mashed them through a strainer. It seems to be working alright, but without doing the other method as well, we’re not really sure which way would have worked better. I did end up using all of the cornstarch mixture in order to thicken it up.

One good thing about this recipe and heating the raspberries first, when you mash the berries through the strainer, what you are left with is essentially jam. Jesse liked this aspect since it gave him homemade jam.

Ingredients:
12 oz. pkg. frozen raspberries in syrup
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. cornstarch
3 tsp. cold water

Directions:
Mash raspberries through strainer, throwing away seeds. Add sugar to raspberries and heat in saucepan to almost boiling. Mix cornstarch with cold water. Add cornstarch mixture little bit at a time to raspberries, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to thicken. Cool in refrigerator and serve with just about anything.

August 12, 2008 · jackie · 3 Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Cakes & Pies

3 Responses

  1. Marco Tontodonati - August 12, 2008

    I love cheesecake… usually when i try someone’s homemade cheesecake, it is very thin (i think this is a result of not using enough cream cheese) and/or it doesn’t have a strong enough flavor, which makes for a bad cheesecake…your cheesecake was very rich and had a perfect depth to it… nice job! I am told that making good cheesecake is very tough but you did a fine job!!

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