Marble White & Dark Chocolate Cheesecake
Looks pretty good for my first real cheesecake
Time: 6 Hours 25 minutes + Chilling
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Difficulty: 3/5
I’m not gonna lie. I haven’t been all that impressed with many of the recipes that I’ve tried from The Baking Bible. I’m not sure what it is, but most of what I’ve tried to make for far has been just about average at best. With that being said, I am a little concerned about how this cheesecake will turn out. I’ve never made a real cheesecake before (I’ve made a no-bake ricotta cheesecake), and I think that they’re known to be a little temperamental at times. In any case, cheesecake is my favorite dessert and I still have high hopes for this one. Fingers crossed.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
The ingredients for this recipe are pretty simple. On ingredient, besides the cream cheese, that might be specifically important is the white chocolate. The recipe specifies that the white chocolate needs to have cocoa butter in it. Apparently, there are some white chocolates without cocoa cutter, so keep an eye out for that. Other than that, I don’t think you’ll have a hard time finding anything. One more note is that you need to have your cream cheese and eggs at room temperature.
Tools:
Parchment Paper
Springform Pan
Bowls
Stand Mixer
Large Baking Tray
Cooking Review:
Preparing for the Chocolate Biscuit: 26 minutes
To prep for the chocolate crust, lined a baking sheet with aluminum foil and sprayed it with cooking spray and dusted it with flour. The recipe says to use parchment paper, but I didn’t have any. Aluminum foil had to do. Next, I boiled some water. I sifted the cocoa powder while the water came to a boil, then poured the water over the cocoa powder and mixed until smooth. I set it aside to cool while I sifted the flour into a bowl and cracked the eggs into a bowl.
Make Batter: 33 minutes
I whipped the egg yolks, a quarter cup of the egg whites, and sugar in my stand mixer until thick for about 5 minutes. The cooled chocolate mixture was added and whipped in for about 2 minutes. I poured that mixture into a separate bowl and folded in the sifted flour. I cleaned the bowl and whisk of the stand mixer and added the remaining egg whites to the bowl along with the cream of tartar. I beat that mixture for about 7 minutes to get soft peaks. The sugar was added next and whipped in until there were stiff peaks, about 2 minutes. The meringue was folded into the chocolate mixture and transferred to the prepared baking sheet and leveled out using an offset spatula.
Baking & Finishing Biscuit: 47 minutes
I baked the biscuit for 8 minutes then transferred it to a cooling rack, still in the aluminum foil. After letting it cool completely, about 20 minutes, I removed the aluminum foil and cut out the circle bottom of the cheesecake, using the springform rim as a template and the tip of a paring knife. With the remaining biscuit, I used a serrated knife to cut three strips. I wrapped them in plastic wrap and refrigerated them. While the cake was cooing, I chopped the white chocolate.
Melt Chocolate: 8 minutes
To melt the chocolates, I poured them into bowls and microwaved them in intervals of 15 to 30 seconds until just about melted before stirring them to fully melt any remaining chunks.
Making Cheesecake filling: 18 minutes
I added the sugar and cream cheese to the bowl of my stand mixer (cleaned) and used the whisk attachment to whip it until smooth, about 3 minutes. The eggs were added and whipped in next, one at a time, taking about 2 minutes. The heavy cream, vanilla, salt, and cornstarch were whipped in next. The filling was split into two bowls and one was combined with the melted dark chocolate through whipping with a whisk. The other was combined with the white chocolate in the stand mixer.
Preparing Springform Pan: 11 minutes
To set up the spring form pan, I lined the sides with aluminum foil and followed it with the strips of chocolate biscuit. I trimmed the last strip to meet the first one. The large round cutout was then wedged in the bottom of the pan, supporting the side strips.
Filling: 8 minutes
I filled the lined springform pan with about half of the white chocolate cheesecake filling, followed by all of the dark chocolate mix, and finally the rest of the white chocolate filling. I used an offset spatula to marble and mix the layers together.
Heat water & Bake: 1 hour 55 minutes
After boiling some water, putting the springform pan into the larger baking tray, and filling it with the boiling water, I baked the cake for 20 minutes. I turned the cake and baked it for another 25 minutes. The oven was then turned off and the cake was left in for an hour.
Cooling: 2 hours
I removed the cake from the oven and the water bath put it on a cooling rack for 2 hours. Then, I put a piece of paper towel over the cake topped with an overturned plate and refrigerated it overnight.
Analysis:
My worries were put to rest with this cheesecake. The flavors are exactly what I expect from a good chocolate flavored cheesecake. The cream cheese flavor is just right and it works great with both the white and dark chocolates. The balance of flavors here is pretty much perfect. The texture is great too, with perfect smoothness. I guess the only downside is that the crust pretty much disappears and is hard to notice, so it kind of makes it seem like the time spent on it was somewhat wasted. On its own, the crust is pretty good, but it is overpowered by the rest of the cheesecake. Yeah, this takes a lot of time to make, but I don’t regret it at all. If you like cheesecake, I don’t think you’ll regret it either. I’m going to give this recipe a 9/10.If the crust stood out more and maybe gave a textural contrast to the cake, I think it would earn a perfect score.
