Deep Dark Chocolate Cheesecake

Did you guys celebrate Yom Kippur two weeks ago? David had a big potluck break-fast on Thursday night and his guests all brought over cream cheese and lox (the first meal after the Yom Kippur fast is usually some bagels with lox and cream cheese). I couldn’t attend the party because I was in Champaign, but I came home to A LOT of leftover cream cheese:

I’m a big fan of bagels and cream cheese, but I can’t finish four containers by myself (well, I’m trying to cut back on my cream cheese consumption). Anyway, I looked up some recipes for cheesecakes and I found a great one on epicurious.com – a deep dark chocolate cheesecake that looked beautiful and easy to make. The perfect way to spend a Sunday night!

Recipe for Deep Dark Chocolate Cheesecake (adapted from Bon Appetit)

Crust
Half bag of chocolate teddy grahams (cheaper than buying the wafers and less work than Oreos)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Filling
10 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 large eggs

Topping
3/4 cup whipping cream
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

I started by making the crust, which was really simple – teddy grahams and butter (to hold the crushed teddy grahams together). The original recipe calls for sugar, but there is definitely enough sugar in the cheesecake and teddy grahams that you don’t really need to add them:

I couldn’t locate my rolling pin, so my Eberle wine bottle was the next best option. Crush all of the teddy grahams and incorporate the butter. Bake for 5 minutes:

To make the filling, melt chocolate chips (the original recipe calls for premium chocolate, but I do not have that kind of money!). I used Trader Joe’s chocolate chips and I thought it tasted pretty good. Since I don’t have a lot of kitchen equipment, I just put a little water in a large pot and then placed a small bowl with chocolate into the pot to melt the chocolate (the poor man’s way to temper chocolate, I suppose):

See, it’s easy!:

After the chocolate is all melted, set it aside and let it cool down while you prepare the rest of the cheesecake. The crust should also be out of the oven and cooling down (if either is too hot, it’ll cook the eggs that are in the dessert – scrambled chocolate eggs just don’t sound good at all!). Blend the cream cheese, sugar, and cocoa powder and add eggs one at a time:

I added the last two eggs together because it didn’t seem to make much of a difference by adding the eggs one at a time. After the cream cheese and eggs are incorporated, mix in the cooled chocolate and pour over the crust. I tapped the pan a couple of times to get rid of all air bubbles and baked for an hour. While the cheesecake was baking, I made the topping – a rich (and simple) ganache topping. After the cheesecake cooled, I poured the ganache over the cheesecake:

Ta-da! The cheesecake was a big hit at my brother’s office and apparently one person managed to eat THREE slices!