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

A Day in Canterbury :)

Hello,
Today I've had a lovely day with Daniel. We spend a lot of time in Canterbury at the moment and are indeed going to be moving to the city full time soon but we've never really taken the time to wander around properly and just enjoy the beauty of such a lovely place so thats what we've done today. It was lovely.

This photo shows one of the many reasons that I love Canterbury. This was taken right in the middle of town yet theres areas like this where you could easily be in a little rural village. Its gorgeous.

This little guy was peeping out from a little hidey hole by the bridge. I'm a sucker for small, cute looking animals!

For lunch we found a lovely little cafe in the middle of the old part of town called Venezia. It was a sweet little place and very italian feeling, it made me want to go back to Florence again. And how funky do those candles look amongst the wine bottles? I also loved all the fairy lights and the indoors lamp post :)

Dan, being a connoisseur of fine food decided to go for a large all day breakfast with black coffee, which looked pretty damn good I must say, even if a little unadventurous :P I went for a vegetable feast pizza which they made there from scratch to order. It was amazing and like usual when we eat out, we both ate way too much. I was overly excited that my apple juice came with a curly straw as well!

After filling ourselves up with too much food we picked up a few bits and pieces including some new "sensible" shoes for me to wear so my feet don't get wet when it rains and a new puzzle to sit and battle our way through after too much malibu this evening :)

Time to pop off and try to make a cake using the microwave now, I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!
What have you been up to today? Have you been out enjoying the sunshine like us? Does that pizza not look amazing?!
Annie x