I was going to tell you about a lasagna we made for my second post… but then I saw that one of my favourite baking blogs had issued this cheesecake challenge, and it was too tempting to pass up!
My daughter loves cheesecake. But something she loves even more is peanut butter, so the choice of recipe was easy:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bliss Cheesecake
Crust Ingredients:
1 pack (32) of peanut butter sandwich cookies, processed into crumbs
5 and 1/3 tablespoons butter, melted
Cheesecake Ingredients:
4 packages (8 oz. each) of cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 eggs, room temperature
3 (1oz) squares semisweet bakers chocolate (melted and cooled)
3 (1oz) squares bittersweet bakers chocolate (melted and cooled)
Peanut Butter Mousse Ingredients:
1/2 teaspoon powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
1 cup heavy cream
2 large egg yolks
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons salted smooth peanut butter
Optional decorations:
Reese’s cups
melted chocolate
whipped cream
Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. For the crust, mix the crust ingredients together and press into bottom and up the sides (about 3 inches) of a springform pan. Set aside.
For the cheesecake: Mix cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl until well blended and creamy. Add the eggs and continue mixing until combined. Add chocolate and continue mixing until combined. Pour mixture into prepared crust and smooth top with a spatula.
Bake for 55 minutes or until center of cake is almost set. The top may crack, but it doesn’t particularly matter, since you’ll be covering it anyway. Let the cake fully cool. When almost cool, place it in refrigerator to chill while you prepare peanut butter mousse.
For peanut butter mousse, dissolve the gelatin over the water in a small bowl and let stand for 5 minutes. In a saucepan over moderate heat, cook the cream until it bubbles around the edges. In another bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar. Temper the eggs: pour about 1/2 cup hot cream into the egg yolks slowly while whisking vigorously. Then slowly pour the egg mixture into the saucepan of cream (whisking constantly). Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the peanut butter and the gelatin. Place mixture into a wide bowl to allow it to cool for a bit, then chill it for just a little while — not until set, but until it’s not so runny. Pour the mixture onto the top of the pie and refrigerate at least one hour or overnight. You can pipe on melted chocolate and decorate with chopped Reese’s cups, if desired.
When completely chilled, loosen the cake from rim of springform pan by wrapping the pan in warm dishtowels. The remove the springform pan. Refrigerate the cheesecake for one day or overnight before serving. Garnish with fresh whipped cream if desired.
Variations
I actually made quite a few adjustments to this recipe. We don’t have peanut butter sandwich cookies here, nor could I find any other kind of peanut-containing cookie. Instead I used a pack of digestive biscuits for the crust and replaced two of the tablespoons of butter with peanut butter in an attempt to still give it a nutty flavour. If I were to try this again I might up it to three tablespoons or even four.
We’re vegetarian, so I used the mousse part of this recipe instead of the mousse recipe used above. I ended up omitting the whipped cream because I felt that the texture of the mousse was fine without it — also, whipping cream by hand is something my toddler can’t really do yet, and my electric mixer is currently in a different country! The mousse complemented the cheesecake very well.
Finally, I substituted the Reese’s cups with chilled and chopped Snickers-like bars. Remember though that they do contain whole peanuts, which can be a choking hazard for toddlers. If you are at all worried about this, it may be better to use something else. (Hey! Like Reese’s cups!)
What my toddler did
- Putting the digestive biscuits into the food processor. Note that this was before I put the blades in, so I had to move the biscuits out of the way a little once she was done.
- Helping turn the dial to switch it on. Thankfully she likes loud noises, but there are quieter ways to make crumbs!
- Spooning the biscuit-and-butter mix into the cake tin.
- Fetching all the cream cheese from the fridge.
- Stirring the cream cheese while I finished off the crust.
- More stirring while I melted the chocolate.
- Licking the chocolate-covered spoon while I finished off the stirring and got the cake into the oven. She stood in her “safe spot” by the fridge for this, which is where she must always be when I open the oven.
- Waiting (more or less) patiently overnight while the cheesecake cooled.
- Stirring the “mousse” and spooning it onto the cake.
- “Squirting” leftover melted chocolate over the mousse for decoration. I guided her hand for part of this.
- Putting aforementioned Snickers-like chunks on top to finish off (whilst snacking on one or two).
The finished product
In my daughter’s words: “Mmm, tasty!”
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This looks delicious as well! I was a nanny for a two year old boy, and we always used to bake together- I love how you explain which steps your daughter helped you with 🙂
Thanks! It was delicious — this may well be my daughter’s birthday cake next year 😀
This looks soooo good! Very cool that your daughter was able to do so much to help:)
Thank you! She does enjoy helping out, which I’m very grateful for 🙂