Okay, I have a problem. I have an insatiable love for chocolate… I can’t hide from it, so I have full-on embraced my problem. Take the other night for example, on a whim I made a chocolate-y, caramel-y Turtle Cheesecake. It was wonderful and glorious and everything perfect. It was also completely devoured in less than 48 hours. Oops.
This chocolate addiction is a real thing. I mean, I am currently typing this up and have a little bowl of chocolate in front of me (M&Ms and alright, it’s not really all that little of a bowl…) But I figure, as a food blogger I am allowed to have my ‘thing’. Unfortunately for me, as a frugal food blogger, a lot of chocolate desserts aren’t the most budget-wise option. I have also been in the game just a little over a year and this is my second cheesecake recipe published… Oh well, I accept my faults and embrace them.
I won’t bore you with the technique of baking a proper cheesecake since I know you want to get right to the good part. However, if you *are* interested, I have an entire post on it called How to Not Mess-up Cheesecake and it goes fairly deep into the merits of water baths, slowly cooling the cake to room temperature and other minute detail-y type stuff like how you should avoid jumping and hosting dance parties while the cake is setting.
Anyways, this Turtle Cheesecake is pure decadence. The dark chocolate cheesecake sits on top of a cookie-crumb crust which is then crowned with a haphazard drizzle of caramel, pecans and even more chocolate. If you want to take your creation to the next level, may I suggest that you ditch the Kraft caramel squares and make my friend Sean’s (from over at Diversivore) Scotch Whiskey Caramel? It provided a fun little spin on a predictable caramel topping! This is pure bliss in a cake, folks! I dare you to make it last more than two days!
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Turtle Cheesecake
Cake Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups of chocolate cookie baking crumbs
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 3 bricks of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 8 squares (8 oz) unsweetened baking chocolate
- 3 large eggs
Topping Ingredients:
- 3 (3 oz) squares of dark chocolate, melted
- 1/4 cup of pecans, roughly chopped
- 1/8 cup of your favourite caramel topping (I used Diversivore’s Scotch Whiskey Caramel)
Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.
- Mix cookie crumbs and melted butter. Press firmly into 9 inch spring form pan, ensuring cookie crumbs go half-way up the side of the pan. Cook crust mixture in oven for 3 minutes.
- Beat cream cheese and sugar and vanilla with electric beater on high until there are no lumps. Add melted chocolate. Add eggs, one at a time with lowest beater setting. Do not over mix!
- Pour cake batter over prepared crust. Prepare water bath with tin foil sides and place cake in the bath. Bake for 45 minutes.
- Shut-off oven and open door to provide a 1-2 inch crack and let cake cool in oven for 1 hour.
- Remove cake from oven and set on counter, on a trivet, to cool with a plate covering the top of the pan for 1 hour.
- Place cake, uncovered, in refrigerator for at least 5 hours. Overnight is preferred! You can remove pan ring after 2 hours in the refrigerator.
- Once cake is fully set, prepare toppings. Haphazardly decorate cake with caramel, sprinkle pecans and top with chocolate.
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