Sunday, August 27, 2006

Chocolate is Your Friend


Hazelnut Truffle Cheesecake
Originally uploaded by CraftyGuy.
Now that we've had some coffee - how about a little dessert?

I've had more a few requests for the recipe for this very naughty Hazelnut Truffle Cheesecake, so I figured "what the heck?" and will post it for today's blog. This cheesecake has had any number of variations and has evolved a lot since the first time I've made the basic chocolate cheesecake from which this was derived, however many years ago that was.

Now, without any further ado, for you caloric pleasure is the current version.

Hazelnut Truffle Cheesecake

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup Vanilla cookie (aka Nilla) crumbs (from about 45 cookies)
1/2 cup Confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup Cocoa powder
1/3 cup Butter, melted
1 jar Nutella (chocolate-hazelnut spread)
3 8oz. packages Cream Cheese, softened
4 eggs
1 can Condensed milk
2 tsp vanilla
12 oz. chocolate (I use 8 oz bittersweet chips and 4 oz semisweet)
1/4 cup Hazelnuts, chopped
32 Chocolate-covered hazelnuts

Directions

  • Preheat oven to 300 deg (F)

  • Combine the vanilla cookie crumbs, confectioners' sugar, cocoa powder and melted butter until it has the consistency of corn meal

  • Press crumb mixture into bottom and 1/3 to 1/2 way up the sides of a 10 inch springform pan

  • Melt 1/2 the jar of Nutella and pour onto crust, spreading very carefully (as this is sticky and may tear up your crumb crust!)

  • Beat cream cheese until fluffy

  • Add eggs, one at a time, beating in until well blended

  • Add condensed milk and vanilla, blending to combine

  • Slowly melt bittersweet and semisweet chocolate chips together in the microwave

  • Blend melted chocolate into creamcheese mixture

  • Pour over crust and Nutella in springform pan

  • Bake for 1 hour, 5 minutes.

  • Leaving the cake in the oven, turn off the heat and open the door part-way. Allow to cool for 1 hour.

  • Remove the cake from the oven, and run a table knife around the pan to loosen cake from the sides.

  • Let the cake cool completely (in the refrigerator is preferable so that the cake is nice and cold for the next step.

  • Once the cake is cool, melt remaining 1/2 jar of Nutella, and pour over top of the cake, spreading like a frosting over the top.

  • Arrange the chocolate-covered hazelnuts around the top of the cake

  • Store the cake in the refrigerator


You can get 16 slices out of this bad-boy.

Enjoy! :-)

3 comments:

  1. Hello - found you (and your fabulous recipe) through Carol's Little World. I made this last night. The only issue I found was with not having quite enough crumb mixture to bring it up the sides of the pan. Thank you for sharing. :)

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  2. Hope you enjoyed it! I hadn't thought much about whether the crumb mixture ought to go all the way up the sides or not, and usually just let it go up about 1/3 or 1/2 way. Sounds like a little more 'playing' for me to do! :-)

    Thanks again!

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  3. I think you need to make me one big! :)

    C.

    ReplyDelete