Veels geluk liewe maatjie

For my mother's birthday we pre-celebrated on Sunday with a wine and chocolate party. We made tamale pie, chevin balls, a sundried tomato tart, various cheeses and a double chocolate cheesecake. And wine, of course. Lots of wine. Wine Wine Wine. We are really fortunate to be able to purchase great wine at cheaper prices (haha, that sounds like a sales pitch), so for the party wine we went to Checkers and got four different types of their Odd Bins wine. The idea behind odd bins is to get great wine but to make it more affordable for the customers because it is not branded (well, besides Odd Bins). So you can see what type of wine it is, what region and what year it is from, but apart from that, you get nothing. Try the Pinotage #703 for R44.99 and you'll see what I mean.

Anyways. I baked my mom a cake, because that is what one does when it is birthday time.
Nom nom nom. It really turned out well.

Here is the recipe:

Double-chocolate baked cheesecake ( Sunday Times Food Section 24 March 2013, p.7)

Base:
200g chocolate digestive biscuits
1 tsp cinnamon
90g melted butter

Filling:
500g cream cheese
2/3 cup castor sugar
1tsp vanilla
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 eggs
60g dark chocolate, chopped

Topping:
200g dark chocolate
1/3 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 170°

So, start by spraying a springform pan and lining it with baking paper. I omit the baking paper because we have this cool cake lifter thing, but if you don't, I suggest lining it in order to remove the cake more easily later on.
Then crush the biscuits in a food processor, add the cinnamon and the butter, mix it all together and press it into the bottom of your pan. Then put it in the refrigerator to cool.

For the filling, beat the cream cheese with the sugar until it is smooth. I didn't have enough cream cheese so substituted mascarpone for some. Then add the vanilla and the lemon juice, beat again. Next add the eggs, and, yes, beat again. Lastly fold in the chocolate pieces. Pour the filling into the base and bake for 50 min ( or until the top is slightly brown but still wobbly). Let the cake cool down.

For the topping melt together the chocolate and the sour cream, whisk it all together until it is nice and glossy, and spread it over your cooled cake.

Refrigerate until the chocolate is set, remove your pan and taaada, you can serve your cake and eat it, too.

Hello ingredients

This would be your base

Folding in the chocolate pieces.

What the baked cheesecake looks like. 

I topped the cake off with some pomegranate seeds because it looked kind of empty, but you could add berries or peaches or shaved white chocolate curls or nothing.