by Marcus Bentley Wise

Created on: April 07, 2010

This is a little baked chocolate cheese cake that is a treat to eat. If you are going to make it, as with most chocolate dishes, use the best chocolate that you can afford. 70% coco solids if you can get it and also a good cream cheese and ricotta as well.

You will need.

125g/4½oz biscuits
65g/2½oz butter, melted
100g/3½oz good-quality dark chocolate

200g/7oz full-fat cream cheese
400g/14oz ricotta
75g/2½oz golden caster sugar
3 eggs
40g/1½oz cocoa powder

Fist you need to make your base . Now here in the United Kingdom we generally use digestive biscuits or sweet meal biscuits. But you can use almost any thing that you like. Once I had a base that was made from crushed bran flakes and golden syrup. As long as the base remains crunchy after it has been made it does not really matter. Crush the biscuits up to a fine crumb and mix with the melted butter. Then press in to a spring loaded cake tin and chill.

Now place the chocolate in a heat proof bowl and heat over a sauce pan of simmering water. Make sure that the bowl does not touch the water. Also break the chocolate up in the small pieces then it will melt faster.

Then take the cream cheese and start to warm that in a sauce pan. Once it has started to warm threw add the sugar and the coco powder. Do not let it get to warm, all you want to do is soften the cheese and blend the sugar and the coco powder together.

Once you have the cheese all blended with the sugar and the coco powder and the chocolate is melted then in another large bowl add your eggs and ricotta cheese. Sue a whisk beat the eggs in the ricotta. Then add the cream cheese mix. Once you have got a smooth mix then add the melted chocolate.

Gently combine every thing together and make sure that every thing is mixed together. Now add this to the base and then bake in a preheated oven 180°C 350°F or gas mark 4. Cook for about one hour, or until cake is springy when you touch it.

Once done allow to cool in the tin then turn out of the tin and top with chopped or grated chocolate and a dusting of cocoa and icing sugar.

This is a bad recipe if you are on a diet or if you are doing the washing up, but it is worth making I assure you.

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