One cold early afternoon, in between my writing assignments, I figured I could make a fine chocolate cheesecake. My roommate, who'd be doing the shopping for our household grocery happened to have brought the ingredients, and they're all ready in the pantry.

But we soon realized we lacked graham crackers, or even the prescribed chocolate sandwich cookies. Still we persisted, we decided we could make the crust from something else. We used the leftover Quaker brand "Life Cinnamon Whole Grain Quaker Oats" for the crust. The rest of the recipe follows:

1 4 oz. butter, slowly melted

4 packages of cream cheese (8 oz. each), softened

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

1 package of semi-sweet baking chocolate, slowly softened

3 eggs

(1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

(2) To make the crust, we crushed finely using the blender machine the whole grain quaker oats to come up with at least 2 cups full. We added and mixed into it the melted butter, plus one fourth (1 / 4) cup sugar. The mixture's taste has to approximate that of similarly made crust using graham crackers mixed with chocolate or even perhaps chocolate sandwich cookies [Remember: the crust is the critical part of making a cheesecake, as some have said].

(3) Grease the pan. Then pour the mixture to a 9-inch springform pan. Press firmly to the sides and the bottom of the pan. Put aside in the meantime.

(4) Mix cream cheese, sugar, vanilla in a big bowl; use an electric mixer at medium speed. Beat the mixture, and add the softened chocolate. Then add the eggs, and continue beating until well blended. Total ten minutes of blending should be enough for this. Then pour the mixture over the crust that you have set aside.

(5) Place the round pan in the middle of a wide cookie pan, if you have one, and put little amount of water on the cookie pan - this will help you manage better the baking process. Also it's best to put the arrangement in the middle of the oven, so that both its sides, i.e. top and the bottom, would receive almost equal amount of heat.

(6) Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. After which, reduce heat of oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Then bake for one hour. Don't bring out the cake from the oven immediately after this time; let it stay for at least 10 minutes. Center of the cake should look like firmly set. When ready, run the knife around the rim of pan to loosen the cake - do this only if you can see that the crust is not sticking to the pan after you tried to unlock the round sides of the pan. Cool before removing the rim. It's also best to refrigerate the cake for 5 hours or overnight. This serves at least 12.

Enjoy!

Learn more about this author, Jerome Espinosa Baladad.
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