Chocolate and Orange Cheesecake

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As we had family coming for lunch yesterday, I decided to follow this week's GBBO theme and make a cheesecake. I'm not a great fan of the usual biscuit bases, so decided to make mine like a chocolate crumble mixture. I also wanted a thicker base layer, so would make a decent amount of the crumble. I love the flavours of chocolate and orange together, so the topping would be orange flavoured.

I used a 23cm springform tin, so it made about 12 good sized slices.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and line the 23 cm springform tin with some baking parchment.

For the base:

Cut 175g of chilled butter into cubes, then melt another 50g of butter and put aside. Put the butter cubes into a processor with 150g light muscovado sugar, 3 tbspn cocoa powder and 250g plain flour. Blitz till it becomes breadcrumbs. Pour in the melted butter and pulse till it's mixed.
Spoon into the bottom of the tin and smooth the top using the back of a spoon.
Bake for about 35 mins till risen a bit, but don't overbake. Take it out of the oven and leave to cool.

Reduce the temperature to 150C/gas2

For the topping:

Grate the zest of 2 large oranges then squeeze out the juice - you need 150ml.
Put 800g cream cheese, 250g mascarpone cheese, 4 eggs, 225 caster sugar, orange zest, 2 tbspn cornflour and 1/2 tspn vanilla extract into a big bowl and beat together with an electric hand beater till mixed together. Add the seeds from a vanilla pod and the orange juice and keep beating till the mixture is nice and smooth.

Pour filling over the cooled base then bake for about 1hr 30 mins or until the cheesecake is light golden, just set round the edge, but is still wobbly in the middle. Turn the oven off and leave the cheesecake inside with the door ajar to cool for about an hour, . Take it out and cool completely then put in fridge to chill in the tin.

Remove from tin and decorate the top with some dark chocolate curls - I used some Green and Black 80% chocolate.





I was really happy with the result. A good third of the cheesecake had a nice crunchy chocolate texture, then the smooth orange flavoured creamy filling, very rich, but not sickly. The dark chocolate curls gave it another texture and the bitter chocolate was a good contrast to the filling.
It was a great success with the family, and there was some left over for them to take home.

Comments

The Caked Crusader said…
It looks beautiful - very professional! Love the contrast in colour of the base and the cheesecake layer
4/9/15 1:43 am
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