This rich American style chocolate cheesecake is perfect for a special occasion. It has layers of vanilla and chocolate cheesecake and is a great dessert to please a crowd.

Mary Berry's American Style Chocolate cheesecake with some strawberries

Could you turn down this baked chocolate cheesecake?

I love cheesecakes. Who doesn't? They are up there among my favourite desserts and I am almost unable to turn one down. Well actually, I can't turn down a delicious fruit or vanilla cheesecake, especially not if it has a traditional biscuit base and some berries with it.

But wait, this is a chocolate one. Well, sometimes you just don't get a choice about the type of cheesecake you make. In fact, sometimes you don't even get a choice of which recipe to make out of the whole book. Or even which book to use. I should be thankful I picked a cheesecake.

If you know Dom of Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe challenge then you'll understand what I'm talking about. This month he's teamed up with Caroline Makes and The More Than Occasional Baker for a fantastic joint challenge where Random Recipes meets Alphabakes.

I picked Mary Berry's Baking Bibleas I felt it only fair to do some baking. I then randomly selected the 18th item in the 'a' section of the index. This turned out to be American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake. It was something I knew straightaway would make my lovely husband happy, but wouldn't have been my first choice.

Mary Berry's American Style Chocolate cheesecake

Checking the Recipe Instructions!

I set about making the cheesecake but as I read the instructions, I became a little doubtful about the recipe. The list of ingredients said 1 egg but the recipe said to add the eggs one at a time.

I decided to do a little research online to check if other people had made the recipe and how many eggs they'd used. After all, I didn't want to ruin the whole cake. I soon discovered that the recipe should have had 2 eggs in it.

How I adapted the Cheesecake recipe

I also discovered that most people had put over twice as much sugar in - 225g rather than 100g as my Baking Bible was telling me. They described the cheesecake as very sweet and having a lot of sugar in it.

Now, I'm not an expert on cheesecake and how much sugar to add, but 100g of sugar to 700g of cream cheese didn't sound like very much, especially as it contained dark chocolate which wouldn't be so sweet anyway. I decided to settle on a nice round 200g of sugar in the end.

I also used more biscuits in the base and upped the butter too as quite a few people said there weren't enough biscuit crumbs to cover the base of the tin. In the end I was glad I had as I felt I only just had enough.

Did we like this American style chocolate cheesecake?

The moral of the story is, you can't always trust a bible, not even Mary Berry's Baking Bible. On the positive side however, the cheesecake did turn out exceptionally well.

My husband loved the chocolate digestive base and the chocolate cheesecake topping was just as I wanted it to be. It cracked on the top as it was cooling in the oven but aside from looks it was pretty near perfect.

You may notice there's not much of a ripple in my cheesecake. Well, I was worried I would lose the vanilla layer completely so I didn't attempt the rippling. Maybe next time.

By the way, if you love chocolate cheesecake and want that flavour but in less than 5 minutes, try my chocolate cheesecake dip!

Mary Berry's American Style Chocolate and vanilla cheesecake

Recipe

Mary Berry's American Style Chocolate Cheesecake

Corina Blum

This rich American style baked chocolate cheesecake is the perfect dessert to make for a party or to finish off a special meal.

4.50 from 4 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 1

cooling time 6

Total Time 1 25

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings

Calories 443 kcal

Ingredients

Ingredients for the Base

150 g chocolate digestive biscuits
75 g butter

Ingredients for the Filling

700 g cream cheese
200 g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
150 g chocolate chips I used dark chocolate

Instructions

Heat the oven to 160C.
Put the butter in a saucepan and heat gently to melt it. Put the digestive biscuits in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the biscuit crumbs.
Press the crumbs into the bottom of a loose bottomed 20cm cake tin that has been greased.
Put the chocolate in a bowl in the microwave and heat gently until melted. Keep taking it out and stirring so it doesn’t cook too much.
Put the cream cheese in a bowl and whisk until soft. Add the sugar and whisk until combined. Add the vanilla and whisk again and then the eggs, one at a time, whisking after each one.
Spoon about half of the mixture into the cake tin on top of the biscuit base.
Pour the melted chocolate into the bowl with the remainder of the cheese mixture. Stir in well and then pour into the cake tin.
If you want to try and make ripples, you can use a knife to run through the mixture, swirling the two colours together. I didn’t do this as my mixture was quite runny and I was worried I would just end up with one colour rather than the ripples I wanted.
Bake in the oven at 160C for an hour until the mixture is rising around the edge of the cake but still quite soft in the middle. Turn the oven off and leave to cool in the oven.
When cooled, take out of the oven and chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

Notes

Nutritional information is approximate and a guideline only.

Nutrition

Calories: 443kcalCarbohydrates: 36gProtein: 5gFat: 31gSaturated Fat: 18gCholesterol: 106mgSodium: 288mgPotassium: 116mgSugar: 31gVitamin A: 1005IUVitamin C: 0.1mgCalcium: 85mgIron: 1mg

Keyword American chocolate cheesecake

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More dessert recipes

Why not try one of my other desert recipes? These are all great recipes to serve as dinner party desserts.

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