Chocolate Cheesecakes

It’s a funny old game, writing a blog.

It encourages you to push the boundaries and try things you haven’t done before. Sometimes though I feel that I need to pull out a crowd pleaser.

We have gathered many readers from all over the world, which is amazing and heartening as mostly it’s just little old me sat here in bed on a Sunday morning, drinking tea and looking out at the misty landscape editing photos. It’s fantastic that so many of you are willing to virtually spend some online time with us.

What I realise in my heart of hearts though, is that mostly, you just love the food.

Food is not all we make but it’s what brings the kids to the yard. We can write deep and meaningful posts about life, we can create art, furniture and photograph all sorts of people, but really we know you just want to see a picture of a chocolate cheesecake.

I know my place.

Make these to take round to a friends for dinner, that’s what we did last night. Friends who live a few doors down from us invited us round. So yesterday I could be seen walking down the road carrying a tray of cheesecakes, looking like a slightly lost waitress.

George and I free-formed the recipe but he wrote down the quantities as we went along…just in case it turned out well. Everyone agreed that they did. So I feel it is my duty to share them with you all.

Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecakes

Makes 8 mini cheesecakes

For the base:

400g packet of McVities Homewheat plain chocolate biscuits*
100g melted butter
2 tablespoons of cocoa

Whiz up the biscuits in a food processor, add the cocoa and melted butter and mix again. Press into 8 small tins with a spoon, spreading the crumbly mix up the side of the tins and pressing in well.

Chill for an hour or so in the fridge.

*McVities Homewheats are a digestive biscuit coated with plain chocolate.

For the cheesecake filling:

100g plain chocolate
100g milk chocolate
150ml whipping cream
200g tub full fat Philadelphia cream cheese
60g icing sugar
1tsp vanilla extract

Melt the chocolates together and let them cool a little.

Whip the cream to soft peaks in one bowl.

Mix the icing sugar, vanilla and cream cheese together in another bowl (it will go runny, that’s ok)

Fold the cooled chocolate into the cream, then fold the cheese mix into that.

Spoon into the chilled bases, top with some raspberries and chill for another hour or two.

If you are feeling arty, drizzle with a little golden syrup. Feeling retro? Dust with icing sugar. If you want to be lardy, trickle on some cream.