Rebeckah's No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake

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Rebeckah's No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake

10/11/2014

Comments

I love cream cheese, so I always thought I would love cheesecake too. However, every time I tried cheesecake I never liked it.

That's when I learned there were different types of cheesecakes, and that many of them are usually baked in the oven.

When I was 16, my stepfather (at the time) showed me how to a make a no-bake chocolate cheesecake.

I fell in love in love with this recipe from the moment I first tried it!

This new recipe uses the one I learned as a base and includes my own tweaks that I have added along the way between my various experiments.

I have changed it so many times, I can't even remember the original recipe, but one thing I do remember is that it used to call for at least double or triple the amount of sugar that I now use.

So if your anything like me, and have been looking for a cheesecake you can fall in love with because you love cream cheese, and you love chocolate, you'll absolutely love this divine recipe!

Ingredients & Tools Needed:

There are a total of 6 ingredients needed for this cheesecake.

For the Crust:

1 1/2 cups (7.2 oz / 200 g) of graham wafer crumbs (digestive biscuit or baby cookie crumbs will also work great with this recipe too)
1/4 Ib. (1/2 cup - usually 1 stick) butter, room temperature
2 tsp sugar *optional

For the Cake:

2 cups (16 oz.) either semi-sweet chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate - depends on how sweet / rich you'd like it to be - use semi-sweet for a sweet cake or bittersweet for a rich cake
1/4 cup sugar - add more or omit completely
24 oz. good quality cream cheese
1/4 Ib. (1/2 cup - usually 1 stick) butter, room temperature
12 oz. thawed frozen cool whip or whipped cream

Tools Needed:

Food Processor (a ziplock bag with a rolling pin will suffice)
9.5" or 10.2" (24 or 26 cm) Spring-Form Cake Pan - smaller pan means the crust will be thicker and the cake will be taller, larger pan means the crust will be thinner and the cake would be shorter
Electric Hand Mixer
Measuring Spoons & Cups
a Large & a Small Bowl
another Small Bowl + Sauce Pan or Double Boiler
a Whisk
a Rubber Spatula
Wax Paper

Step 1: Prepare the Pan & Double Boiler

Take a piece of wax paper and place it on top of the bottom piece of the spring-form pan. Close the pan, and squeeze out any trapped air under the wax paper.

If you are using an electric oven, preheat your oven to 350ºF (170ºC). If you are using a gas-based oven, there is no need to preheat your oven just yet.

You'll also want to get your double boiler ready for melting the chocolate in Step 3. So heat up the water for it now. If your water heats up before your ready for Step 3, just turn it off.

Step 2: Prepare the Crust

Chocolate Cheesecake - Step 1: Prepare the Crust @beckastreasures

Crust Baked

The first thing you need to do is prepare your crust.

Place your graham crackers into a food processor and process until there are no large pieces. If you use the 14.4 oz box of graham crackers, half of the box = 1 1/2 cup of crumbs.

Place all crust ingredients into a small bowl.

Pause crumbs for a second to quickly take the butter wrapper and rub the excess butter all over the spring-form pan. Continue with crust...

With your hands, scoop up the crumbs and squish them into the butter by rubbing them both in your hands. Let your love flow through your hands and into the crust as you work (it sounds like a silly thing to say, but believe me when I tell you how much better it will taste if you do this). Repeat this process until completely combined.

Next, press crumbs evenly into the spring-form pan.

If you haven't already, now's the time to turn on your oven to 350ºF (170ºC).

Place your crust into the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes. As it bakes, you will work on the chocolate, but Crust will be ready to come out of the oven once the edges start to turn golden brown. Set aside to cool...

Step 3: Melt the Chocolate

Chocolate Melted - My kitchen is rather dark so apologies for the poor lighting.

As you are waiting for the crust to finish baking, it's time to melt that yummy chocolate...

Pour your chocolate chips or chopped pieces of chocolate into the top section of your double boiler (or you might be using a regular small bowl like me), and add a spoon of the butter to it.

Melt chocolate over low heat on top of double boiler (or small sauce pan of boiling water). Stir frequently until smooth and melted. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Your crust should be ready by now if the timer hasn't gone off already.

Step 4: Beat Ingredients Together

Place cream cheese, second stick of butter and sugar into a large bowl. Beat with hand mixer on medium until smooth.

Once chocolate has cooled (which is usually really fast), add to cream cheese mixture. Blend on low speed until blended.

Step 5: Fold in the Whipped Cream

By the time I got to this step, I was so involved in making my birthday cake, I forgot to take a picture of this step. So, I will just tell you right away, this is probably the longest step. Plus, it will look strange or like you've done something wrong as you work on it, but I promise you it is completely normal.

Scoop thawed whipped cream on top of cream cheese mixture. Fold in cream until blended. It will look grainy as you get into folding them, but that is completely normal. Just keep folding the cream into the cheese until it is smooth and blended.

Step 6: Pour Mixture into Pan & Chill Cake

Chocolate Cheesecake - Step 6: Pour Mixture into Pan via @beckastreasures

Cake ready for chilling

Now that your cake is fully blended, pour into your spring-form pan, and spread top until smoothed and flat.

Set in the fridge to chill for at least 24 hours, but for maximum results, make this cake 2 days in advance.

It only takes a few hours to be completely chilled, but it takes a few days for the mixture and flavours to fully combine.

After cake has chilled for a few hours, you make add any decorations as you see fit. I pipped the last of my whipped cream onto the cake and sprinkled chocolate shavings on top of that for my birthday cake as you will see in the pictures below...

I meant to take a picture of my full piece of cake, but I only remembered to do that after I had taken a bite of it. I was way too excited for my birthday cake. Cheese cake is a real treat! :D

You'll see I have a normal sized piece of cake in the picture below. I will warn you right now, that piece was way to big for me. This is a really rich cake, so small sliver sizes to last many days is better than trying to eat such a big piece at once.

To serve your cheesecake, run your knife under hot water before you slice, and repeat after every few slices. Doing this keeps the cake from sticking to the knife. If it starts to stick, remove excess cheesecake from the knife and run under hot water again.