Baked Cheesecake with Mocha Marble

Ever since I tried baked cheesecake, I have grown to love it. Among all varieties that I have tried, my favorite is baked cheesecake, especially new york cheesecake. I have gathered varieties of cheesecake recipes but have never had the courage to try them out, mainly because of the amount of cream cheese needed and to think that what if people don’t like it then those ingredients will just go to waste On top of that, I used to live just with my younger brother who are not a big fan of cheesecake, so there are more restrains to try out those recipes. Now that my dear hubby is in the picture, I tend to cook/bake things to suit his liking. This is one of the case. I started with basic original baked cheesecake and add some mocha paste to small amount of the batter hoping to create the marble effect then some Nutella swirl on top, also chocolate cookies crumbles for the base. I must admit we love this! It is smooth, creamy, rich, but not too sweet, the chocolate cookies crumble works really well with the mocha flavour. This recipe is definitely a keeper! Hope you give it a try and let me know how it turns out 🙂 This recipe is for a 9 inch springform pan.

For the base:

• 250 grams of chocolate cookies, processed to fine crumbs
• 100 grams of melted butter (if used unsalted butter, add a tiny pinch of salt)

For the filling:

• 500 grams of cream cheese at room temperature
• 3 eggs
• 300 ml sour cream
• 160-175 grams of castor sugar depends to your liking (I used 160 grams and happy with the results)
• vanilla extract
• mocha paste
• Nutella

Let’s start with the base, mix the melted butter with cookies crumb well and press them on your non-stick springform pan. You could also line your pan with baking paper to ensure that the cheesecake batter will not stick to the pan while baking and cracked the top once it is shrunk. Press the cookies crumb firm to the base of the pan and go up slightly around the side. Then you can bake it for about 15 minutes at 180 C for crisper texture or let it set in the fridge for 30 minutes (this will result in softer texture). Now to the cheesecake batter, beat the cream cheese until creamy and no lump visible, add in sugar and mix again while adding egg one at each time. Ensure that everything is well incorporated before adding a dash of vanilla extract and sour cream. Beat in low-speed just until all ingredients are combined and smooth. Scoop out some of the filling batter into a smaller bowl and add the mocha paste, mix well. Pour half of the white filling batter on top of the crumble base (it should be hardened now), then add dollops of mocha flavour batter scattered around the cake, and use a toothpick to create a swirl pattern. Repeat the process until all batter used. Use Nutella to create a swirl pattern on the surface of the cheesecake. I did a criss-cross pattern then swirl it with toothpick. As you can see on the picture below, I am definitely no expert on cake decorating 😛

Tips:

• make sure all ingredients are at room temperature so that easier to mix everything together and avoid lumps of cream cheese
• do not over mix the cheesecake batter so there are not too many air packets within the batter