The movies make weeks, months and years a breeze. You meet a guy, you fall in love, you marry him or, maybe you don’t, but it all takes an hour an a half or maybe two from start to finish. The last 6 months of my life, if it were condensed into a movie, will probably be a lot longer than that 2 hours. Unless, of course, the director was a pure genius at summary and editing skills. Anyways, so much has happened, some more life changing than others, but the point is, I miss my food blog. I miss it SOOO VERYYY MUCH - no words can describe it. I also missed trawling the net in search of new recipes that would create this overwhelming desire to go to the store and get the ingredients to whip it up.

So when I finally managed to get back to donning an apron (which, in reality, never happens!), coffee cheesecake sounded very very tempting. Maybe it was the thought of having that smooth cheese melting in my mouth and the hint of coffee giving it the added oopmh to make me hit the roof and come down to earth with a bump that got me all excited to get down to business and start searching for THE recipe. Unfortunately, the one I was looking for never showed up.

There is no THE recipe. It doesn’t exist. I was looking for just coffee + cheese = coffee cheesecake. It was oh so enlightening that all the coffee cheesecake recipes that I found had chocolate in it and just a teensy weensy bit of coffee. I felt cheated. I also felt very much like an alien. How could I NOT know?? But I didn’t and it was good that I learnt something. It was even better that it spurred me on to get that cheesecake into the oven and see how good it came out.

It was good. It could have been better though. I think I overdid the coffee bit. Some part of my brain just refused to let go that it was more chocolate than coffee in a coffee cheesecake. I’m blaming that part of the brain for insisting that I increase the amount of coffee by a tablespoon. The cake was definitely screaming COFFEE Cheesecake. My husband said so. And when the man speaks, I do not doubt. But the cake didn’t last very long either. It disappeared which, I must say, is very telling of just how good it must have been even with an overdose of coffee in it. Haha!

But for your sake and mine, we don’t want to go about with an extra shot of coffee in a coffee cheesecake so the recipe below is the reduced coffee version. Oh, and let me change that coffee cheesecake to Chocolate & Coffee Cheesecake. Now, that sounds much better. The best part of making  this cheesecake was not about how it turned out, not how fast it finished, not how happy I was to be back to baking again. It was having made it with my sis. *love*

Ingredients:

Oreo-Graham Crust:
1 cup of oreo cookies (about 13)
1 cup of graham biscuits
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup sugar - melted

Cheesecake Filling: (all ingredients to be at room temperature)
2 packets of Philly Cream Cheese
2 packets of 1/3 fat Philly Cream Cheese
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 1/4 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
8oz sour cream
1/3 cup heavy cream (optional)
1 tbsp of Nescafe instant granules
2 tbsp Hershey’s cocoa powder
4 oz bittersweet chocolate - Ghiradelli 60% cocoa
2 tbsp boiling water

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven 350F.
2. In a ziploc bag, add the 2 types of biscuit and use a rolling pin to crush. Then put the crushed biscuits into a blender and grind to get coarse crumbs. They should resemble breadcrumbs. In a bowl, combine the blended ingredients with the melted butter. Mix well.



3. Then pour into the springform pan. Press the mixture firmly to the base of the pan. Bake in the oven for 10min. Remove from the oven and reduce oven to 325F.



4. Chop the chocolate into small pieces and melt over a double-boiler.



5. Combine the boiling water, cocoa and Nescafe. Mix well and pour into the melted chocolate. Stir until mixed well.



6. Beat the 4 packets of cream cheese.



7. Add the sugar and cornstarch.



8. Beat until well combined scraping the sides at least twice. Make sure there are no lumps.



9. Add the sour cream.



10. Add the eggs one at a time. Continue beating after each addition. As soon as the eggs are well blended stop beating. Do not over-beat. Scrape the sides and bottom a couple of times.



11. Add the heavy cream and vanilla and stir to mix well.



12. Pour half of the cream cheese mixture onto the cooled pre-baked oreo-graham base.



13. Add the lukewarm chocolate-coffee mixture into the remaining half of the cream cheese mixture. Stir well until smooth.



14. Gently pour the chocolate-coffee cheese cake mixture onto the plain cheesecake mixture already in the pan. Then gently tap the pan onto the counter to make the air bubbles surface.



15. Use a skewer to gently make swirls to combine the plain and chocolate mixtures lightly and create a design on the top of the cake.



16. Wrap the base of the pan with plastic wrap. Then cover the plastic wrap with aluminum foil.Place the pan into a rectangular roasting tray and pour hot water into the tray. The water should come half way up  the height of the pan.



17. Leave it to bake in the oven for 40minutes. Turn off the oven. Then stick a wooden spoon to prop the oven door open and let the cake continue to cook in the oven for another hour.
18. Remove the cake from the oven. The center should still be slightly jiggly but the top should be firm.
19. Let the cake come to room temperature before putting it in the refrigerator. Leave it in the refrigerator overnight.
20. When ready to eat, serve a slice with a dollop of whipped cream or just by its glorious self.