Adventures in Chocolate Cheesecake

How better to spend a saturday than making chocolate cheesecake? Originally, Daniel and I set out to make *this* yummy looking recipe from River Cottage which uses avocados to make chocolate ganache but it turns out that the avocados need to be VERY ripe, so our bullet like offerings just didn't make the cut when it came to mashing...the less said about it the better really, so chocolate cheesecake was the next best option!

First of all came the biscuit base. We made this by crushing half a packet of digestive biscuits, mixing with a little melted butter and some chopped up pecan nuts. This was left to set in the fridge for around an hour whilst we threw bits of this and that together for the cheese topping :)

I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what quantities of what were in the topping as it was just a case of throwing in what we thought until it tasted good. There was two 200g packets of extra low fat Philadelphia, lots of cocoa powder, icing sugar, vanilla essence, a little drinking chocolate, a shot of Tia Maria and two mini Hershies bars... so a bit of everything :D We also spread a thin layer of dulce de leche over the base before adding the chocolate topping.

After leaving it to set for a couple of hours (miraculously) it was able to be pushed out of the tin AND cut pretty easily...even if the base crumbled a little. It also tasted totally amazing, but trust me, you only need a tiny slice :P

Chocolate cheesecake along with snuggling up in front of the telly and very little other activity has made for a fab day thats made an ill Annie feel a little bit better.

What have you been up to today? Anything as exciting as making cheesecake? Have you had this horrible cold thingy thats going around? I'd love to know how long I'm going to feel so rubbish.
Annie xx