Marbled Cheesecake : A Resurrected Post

People, this post was first published in May 2012, my second post after I started this humble blog. But guess what? Madam itchy fingers was fooling around with the editing tools and did not know the difference between Update and Revert to Draft. So I clicked Revert to Draft and the next thing I know my post "disappeared" from my blog. This post is rather nostalgic to me because it brings back my early naive blogging days. And I mean, look at the lousy photos. Frightful angles and poor focus.

I wish to thank Wendy, Angel, Sonia, Quay Po, Elin, Jessie and Ping for dropping comments in this post back in 2012 as your kind words had encouraged me greatly and brought me so much joy. And I also take this opportunity to thank all my blogger friends and readers. Your friendship and support means a lot to me :)

So I leave you now with this old resurrected post in its original form.

Phong Hong
15-08-2013

Cheesecake is another one of my favorite cakes to make. And eat. I used to think that it was a difficult cake to make. I would walk into Secret Recipe and lust over the selection of cheesecakes. Oh my, if I could have a piece of each, I would be whisked into cheesecake Nirvana. Cheesecake is actually an easy cake to make. I used to be intimidated by the technical aspects like waterbath, cooling in the oven with door ajar etc, etc. But now I know that all that complication is not necessary at all. I learned to make cheesecake from watching videos in particular Laura in The Kitchen and Joy of Baking and of course lots of experiments. This recipe for marbled cheesecake came from Good Food Channel and after a few attempts, I have made certain adaptations. Here's my version of the recipe :

Marbled Cheesecake

For the base :
(i) 200g digestive biscuits
(ii) 50g melted butter

For the filling :
(i) 500g cream cheese
(ii) 1/3 cup + 2tbsp castor sugar
(iii) 3 eggs + 1 egg yolk
(iv) 1 cup whipped cream
(v) 1 tbsp custard powder
(vi) 1 tbsp vanilla essence

For chocolate marbling
(i) 2 cubes of chocolate (taken from a block of dark bittersweet chocolate)
(ii) About 3 to 4 tbsp of the cream cheese filling.

Method :

For the base :
- preheat oven to 140C.
- butter an 8" round springform pan.
- crush digestive biscuits finely.
- pour the crushed biscuits into a bowl and add melted butter. Mix well until mixture looks like wet sand.
- pour mixture into the pan and press firmly to compact the base.
- bake for 10 minutes and set aside.

For the filling :
- beat cream cheese until smooth.
- add castor sugar and mix well.
- add eggs one by one and mix well.
- add vanilla essence and custard powder and mix well.
- lastly add whipped cream and mix well.
- pour mixture into springform pan.

For the chocolate marbling :
- melt chocolate and add 3 or 4 tbsp of the cheesecake filling to get a runny chocolate mixture.
- use a teaspoon to spoon drops of chocolate mixture onto the filling and gently swirl to get marbling effect.

Bake for about 50 mins. The cake is done when the outer ring is firm but the middle is still wobbly. After taking it out of the oven, run a spatula around the edge of the cake for easy removal later. Cool the cake completely before chilling in the fridge overnight.

Some personal notes :

1. I did not use a waterbath and did not cool the cake in the oven. No cracks, yay!
2. To crush the digestive biscuits, I just put them in a freezer bag and crush using the pestle of my trusty mortar.

Put biscuits into bag and bash away.

All you need is a good ole pestle and a fair bit of angst, of which I have plenty of.
Being menopausal does that to you, but let's not go there.

3. To melt the chocolate, I improvised on the double boiler method. You don't have to do this, can use microwave oven but I am spooked over bad vibes on the micro. I put my chocolate into a small glass tumbler, placed it in a bowl and poured boiling water into the bowl. And stir.