Home Economics: My Birthday Cake

Hi there! 

A couple of days ago it was my birthday. My sister made me a cheesecake which was made by combining two recipes (I'll leave a link to both.) and making one delicious cake.  

Nutella and Dark Chocolate Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 225g Rice Cookies
• 75g butter, melted, unsalted
• 300g Nutella + 15g, warmed in microwave
• 150g Dark Chocolate (used 70% Cadbury Old Gold)
• 45ml boiling water
• 2 ¼ teaspoons gelatin powder
• 560g cream cheese (we only had 500g), softened in microwave
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 225ml fresh cream
• 40-70g hazelnuts, roasted and chopped

1. Grease and line the base and sides of a 20cm (base measurement) springform pan.
2. Place the biscuits in the bowl of a food processor and process until finely crushed. Add the butter and 15g Nutella and process until well combined. Transfer mixture to the prepared pan. Use fingers or a glass to spread and press mixture firmly over the base. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.
3. Place the Cadbury white chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir with a metal spoon until chocolate melts. Remove from heat.
4. Place the boiling water in a small heatproof glass. Sprinkle over the gelatin. Stir until gelatin dissolves.
5. Use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add the cream and beat until smooth. Add the gelatin mixture and stir until well combined. Separate the cream cheese mixture into two thirds, and one third. Add the 300g warmed Nutella to the two thirds of the cream cheese mixture and stir to combine. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. 
6. Meanwhile, place the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl over saucepan of simmering water. Stir with a metal spoon until chocolate melts and remove from heat. Add the remaining cream cheese mixture to the chocolate and stir to combine. Pour into the middle of the Nutella mixture and smooth the Nutella mixture over the surface. 
7. Sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts over the top, cover with glad wrap, and put freezer for 2-3 hours to set.
8. Take out of freezer about 10 minutes prior to serving, it can be kept in fridge after this.

Notes

This recipe takes inspiration from this Triple Chocolate Cheesecake.
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/triple-chocolate-cheesecake-2/0745db87-bfba-4094-9764-0c7a948ee527

Except as we were using a 20cm pan instead of a 23cm pan, My sister calculated the area of each pan, to find out by how much to decrease the ingredients (it worked out to be roughly a 25% smaller area, so we multiplied all the original ingredients by 0.75, and allocated the milk and white chocolate weights to the Nutella. 

We decided to not buy another container of cream cheese to get the required 560g, and just kept it at 500g.

If one were to want sides made from the biscuit base, more biscuits would be required.

The dark chocolate mixture is thicker and denser than the Nutella mixture, and so doesn’t pour or spread well – hence why it was ‘hidden’ under the Nutella. We may try putting it as the first layer next time, so that it spreads easier over the base.

We also used this Nigella Lawson Nutella Cheesecake recipe as a reference.
https://www.nigella.com/recipes/nutella-cheesecake

We took the idea of putting a bit of Nutella in the biscuit base, as well the idea of using roasted chopped hazelnuts on top. 

We also used less butter in the base as the amount of from the Triple Chocolate Cheesecake recipe seemed like too much, and Nigella’s recipe used a smaller butter to biscuit ratio.

Regarding the maths above, my sister worked all of this out.

Sensory Evaluation:

The Nutella and dark chocolate complimented each other really nicely and went very well together. The two flavours also went very well with the rice cookie crust. The hazelnuts were a great addition to the cheesecake too. The Nutella layer was creamy and sweet. It wasn't overpowering and complimented the dark chocolate. The dark chocolate layer was a bit harder than the Nutella one but was still easy to get through with a spoon. It was also sweet but had a bit of a bitterness which complimented the Nutella layer.

The rice cookie crust and hazelnuts added a nice crunchy texture to the cheesecake making it more interesting when you ate it. The creamy Nutella layer and firmer dark chocolate layer went well, it was interesting eating it as the consistencies were quite different to each other. I liked this as it would've been quite odd having a completely creamy cheesecake or a cheesecake which was firm and slightly bitter throughout. Both flavours bought out the flavour of the other one when paired together, you could always distinguish which was which and neither were too strong or overtook the other. 

The cake looked very appealing, the hazelnuts on top made it very eye catching and made the cake look more exciting and interesting. 

Here are some photos of the end product:

Thanks for reading!