Mother's Day Food

Here is another one of my "Get out of Jail Free" dishes...

Hazelnut Cheesecake with Dark Chocolate Base & Butterscotch Sauce.

Like many of my recipes, this started out as something else (it used Pecans).  But I'm not a huge fan of pecans, plus my wife is a sucker for Ferrerro Rochere chocolates which contain hazelnuts.

So, my version of the recipe.

Preheat your oven to 160C (140C fan-forced)
Dark Chocolate Cheesecake Base
150g of Nice Biscuits (these should be mild-tasting-to-no-real-taste sugary biscuits)
50g of melted butter
50g of melted dark chocolate (70% or darker)

Break up the biscuits and either crush them or put them in a dicer/food processor.  You want them to be granular and about three or four times the size of a sugar crystal.  While you're breaking them up, melt the chocolate and butter together (I use a coffee pot for this). Once the butter and chocolate are now nice and fluid and the two are starting to almost become a single liquid, pour them into the biscuit and hand-stir with a spoon.  The entire mix should be a gentle brown colour when you are done.  Take this and pack it down into the base of a 22cm springform pan (I recommend you actually wrap the base of the springform pan in grease-proof before you do this and lock the base in upside down springform in place).  Refrigerate this for at least 30min.

Cheesecake
500g of cream cheese
165g of caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tbspn of plain flour
60g of hazelnuts
a dash vanilla

Trick: Let the cream cheese come to room temperature (have it sitting on the bench while you make the base).
Get the 60g of hazelnuts and toast/roast them in the bottom of a pan.  Don't be afraid to have the skins burn a little.  When you can easily smell the roasted hazelnuts, take them out and cool them.  Then either crush them (I use a mortar and pestle and crack them against the mortar) or very gentle chop them with a knife or food processor.
Put the cream cheese into the bowl of a food mixer (I don't recommend using a hand blender, because you want to leave it to sit and keep mixing) along with the sugar.  "Cream" the cheese with the sugar and when it is starting to look very smooth and much more fluid, put in the two eggs one at a time allowing each egg to be mixed through.  Put in the dash of vanilla (if you want it to have a more "vanilla and hazelnut" type taste, be a little heavy handed with the vanilla).  Sprinkle in the flour and let it mix through.  Last, but by no means least, put in the hazelnuts (don't be put off by putting in the skins, I have found it genuinely adds something to the cheesecake).

Pour the cheesecake mix over the biscuit base.  Then bake it for 45min.  When the timer goes off, turn off the oven and have the door open a crack.  When it has cooled, make the butterscotch topping.

Butterscotch Topping
75g of DARK brown sugar
40g of butter
1 tbspn of cream (any cream will do)

Put all three into a pot on low-to-medium heat and just keep stirring until you can't hear the sugar scratching on the pot.

Pour the butterscotch over the cheesecake (while still in the springform) and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours.  I recommend overnight with plastic wrap over it.


My wife never really quite appreciated cheesecakes, she'd mostly had chilled cheesecakes, but this decadent little experiment is now one of the desserts of mine she loves best.  By the way, this is the first time I have told people how this dessert is made.  Go win friends and influence people with this little dessert.  If you want something to really go over the top with this... chantilly cream will just about make people's mouths explode (and also likely to kill their GPs level of calm with your cholesterol levels).