Hi Bold Bakers, I'm Gemma Stafford and
this week on Bigger
Bolder Baking we are making
this decadent chocolate cheesecake
completely from scratch.
The cream cheese, the Oreos, everything.
Here's how to do it.
So the first step in our cheesecake we're
gonna start from the bottom up so we're
talking about crust.
Now this is an Oreo cookie crust and you
are about to learn how
to make the most amazing
Oreo cookies from scratch.
I absolutely love these.
Once you make them you're
never gonna buy them again.
So we start this in a food processor, you
can also do it by hand.
The food processor is much faster.
So it's just regular ingredients, some
flour, a little bit of
sugar, baking powder, baking
soda, a little bit of salt.
Now our secret ingredient in Oreos, Oreos
have a unique, like
very rich, deep chocolatey
flavor and that is
because of black cocoa powder.
Now this is actually pretty
widely available nowadays.
It is ultra-processed Dutch cocoa powder
so it's less bitter and
it has a deeper flavor.
It is when you smell it and you taste it
you're like that's an Oreo.
This is Oreo flavor right here.
So in that goes.
Now if you do not have that, just use
regular Dutch processed
cocoa powder, that's totally
fine.
This will give you
that unique Oreo flavor.
Now I'm just going to give
these a little mixy mix together.
Now into this we're going to add in our
cold butter, just like that.
We just want to blend this up until it
resembles kind of you know
fine bread crumbs, just a
few seconds.
There we go, I can always hear when it
has kind of started to form.
So there you go.
Just like that.
You see we can see little lumps of butter
all the way throughout.
So that is great.
Into this we're going
to crack in our egg.
Then back on with our hat and then blend
it up until our dough comes together.
Again this is just
going to take a few seconds.
Do you hear that noise?
It kind of starts to thud.
That is our dough that has come together.
Perfect.
Look at that.
Just like an Oreo.
Lovely.
Now the beauty of this cookie dough is
that you don't have to chill it.
I'm always chilling my doughs, you don't
have to chill this one.
We can scoop it and get it
onto our trays straight away.
I have some baking trays.
And for this cookie we are going to scoop
a levels tablespoon
of dough just like that
for each cookie.
Put a little ball and then onto your tray
and give it a little smush.
Little smush just to flatten it.
And just keep on doing that
with the rest of your dough.
On your baking tray give them a little
space between themselves
because they will spread
out.
Now you might be wondering can I just
take this dough and
smush it into your cheesecake
pan.
And you know I recommend doing it this
way because if you do
one big cookie it might
be a bit chewy and hard to cut into where
this will give you a
lovely crumble base because
we're going to blend them up later.
And there is our last one.
Now you might have cookie dough left over
because you don't need all of the cookies
for this cheesecake so you can scoop it,
freeze it, bake it off, whatever you want
to do.
Now I'm going to get
these guys into the oven.
Bake your cookies at 325 degrees
Fahrenheit, 170 degrees
Celsius, fan assist so you want
a lower temperature with the fan on so
the cookies cook evenly.
Now they only take around
8 to 10 minutes to bake.
So our cookies are in the oven.
While that's happening
let's start our cream cheese.
I've got a nice big
heavy bottom sauce pan here.
Now cream cheese is one of my most
popular recipes on
BiggerBolderBaking.com.
We need a lot of milk.
We're making a big batch of cream cheese
here for this cheesecake.
So what you want is full, fat, dairy milk
to get a lot of curds out of it.
So now this is really simple.
All we do is turn on the heat to around a
medium, medium high
and just slowly let this
come to a simmer.
When it does we're going
to then add in our acid.
Now I'm going to use lemon juice and what
this does is it helps
curdle the cream cheese.
Now you can use vinegar.
I will tell you personally that I like to
use lemon juice
because you have less flavor
from the lemon juice than you do from
vinegar which can be a little bit harsh.
So as you see it's come to a simmer.
Now we're going to add in lemon juice a
tablespoon at a time.
Now the reason that we do this is because
it always varies how much you need to add
to make it curdle.
An interesting fact, the riper a lemon
the higher the acidity.
So it really depends on
the lemons that you're using.
Sometimes you need three or four
tablespoons,
sometimes you need a lot more.
So as you can see it's
starting to curdle there now.
I'm going to stop adding lemon juice.
I'm going to let it
heat through a little bit.
And now you can see all those curds.
You see the way it's separating the curds
and the way this is perfect.
I have myself set over here on the
countertop so follow me
over and we're going to strain
this.
So here I have a bowl lined with a sieve
and some cheesecloth.
Now I have cheesecloth, not everybody has
cheesecloth so if you don't have it feel
free to use a clean kitchen towel that's
not fuzzy and quite thin.
Now what we're going to do here is let
this hang and strain for
a little bit, let it cool
down.
Then we're going to go in and just
squeeze out all of that liquid.
So this has cooled down a little bit.
Here's what you want to do, bring all the
corners of your
cheesecloth, squeeze out any
extra whey.
Get as much out of there as possible.
Now here's the great thing about making
cream cheese, you
don't have to waste this.
You can put this in
smoothies, people put it in drinks.
And you also can use it in baking as a
replacement for buttermilk.
It also works really
well, that's up to you.
Now we have our
lovely curds, look at that.
Beautiful, looks great.
Into our food processor
for the very last step.
So we need to get this like
store bought cream cheese.
Gonna put a little bit of
salt in there for flavor.
And we are going to blend this up until
it's really lovely and smooth.
So now we're blending it on homemade food
processors so it can
be a little bit chunky
sometimes, not like store bought.
Depending on your machine, so what I like
to do is take a
little bit of whey add it in
there a tiny bit just to
loosen it up and help blend it.
You can also add in a splash
of milk or a splash of cream.
You can see and you can hear that it's
kind of slapping around more.
It's getting nice and smooth.
There's something really satisfying about
homemade cream cheese.
You can have it sweet or savory with just
crusty bread but look at that.
Yummy.
The flavor is amazing, the
texture is really lovely.
What I'm gonna do is put this into a
bowl, let it cool down,
pop it into the fridge.
And the next step is
let's go check on our cookies.
So our cookies came out of the oven while
we were doing our cream cheese.
They've cooled down.
They look gorgeous.
I adore these cookies so much, especially
with how beautiful
they look with all their
crinkles on top.
Now we're going to make our base.
So we only need 18 cookies for our base
so I'm gonna add them
into my food processor.
On with our lid and then just blend them
up until they're lovely and fine.
So our cookies have totally crumbed,
they're lovely and fine.
I'm gonna add in melted butter to bring
this cookie base together.
Sometimes people add in granulated sugar
to a cheesecake base or
a pie base and I never
understand that because
it's just not necessary.
We have sugar in our filling, you know
there's sugar in the cookies.
So this is just the amount that we need.
Just blend it until it starts to clump.
And there we have it.
Now we're gonna put it into our pan.
Let me show you a little trick if you
haven't seen me do this
already about a cheesecake
pan.
Nine inch cheesecake pan.
The base always comes like this but it
can be hard to lift
your cheesecake because the
base has a lip.
So here's what we're gonna do.
Take out the base, flip it over.
This side is lovely and flush and smooth.
Pop that back in there and then just pop
it in to your base
again and flatten it out.
That is a trick I learned
many years ago as a pastry chef.
I don't know about you guys but cookie
base is one of my favorite
parts about our cheesecake.
Just flatten it out in the bottom there.
Go in with your
hands, don't use a spatula.
Get your hands dirty.
Oh my gosh, freshly baked
cookies in our cheesecake base.
I mean who else does this?
Only us.
So lovely we're gonna pop this into the
fridge, I'm gonna grab my
cream cheese and we're gonna
make our filling for our cheesecake.
So we have a lot of our components ready
now so we're gonna make the
filling for our cheesecake
into the food processor yet again.
We're going to add in our cream cheese
and we're going to add in our sugar.
What we're going to do is just blend this
up by itself first to
get it really lovely
and smooth before we add
in any other ingredients.
If you don't get the lumps out now then
they'll remain in the
cheesecake later if you want
to get it really nice
and smooth right now.
Okay lovely, nice and
smooth, look at that.
Now into this we are going to add in our
cocoa powder, just
regular cocoa powder in there
and our melted chocolate.
This is what makes
this cheesecake so rich.
But here's the thing, what I want you to
do is melt this
chocolate before you start
this whole process so it has time to cool
down because you don't
want it to be too hot
and then your other
ingredients to be cold.
So pour that in there on top of your
cream cheese, just like that.
This is bittersweet chocolate, this is
what I recommend, the darker the better.
On with our hat again
and blend until combined.
Our chocolate's blended in there, into
this we're going to pour in our cream.
This is whipping cream so
something with a high fat content.
And we're also going to add
in a dash of vanilla extract.
Now this is a no bake cheesecake as you
can see but it's also
no gelatin so great for
vegetarians and no eggs either.
We don't need gelatin because the
chocolate once it gets
colds and sets, it will set and
firm our cheesecake.
Let's have a little look at our filling.
I'm going to blend
this up a little bit more.
And there you have it.
Once you have all the components, the
base is actually really fast to make.
Like I said, it's this lovely truffle
mixture, really lovely.
So here I have my cookie base and we're
going to scoop on our filling.
You can already tell just by looking at
this filling, this
cheesecake's going to be awesome.
I haven't even tasted it yet, I already
know it's going to be awesome.
Okay lovely, there's our filling.
Flatten it out nice and
smooth with a palette knife.
Just like that, lovely.
Give it a little tap.
Just so it settles and
there's no air bubbles.
And it's going to go around
and just clean up that edge.
So this filling is already really firm
but I'm going to cover
it, pop it into the fridge
that it's set even more for a few hours
then it will be ready
to be topped and enjoyed.
So it's been a few hours and our
cheesecake is nice and firm.
So here's what we're going to do, take a
thin edge knife and go
around the rim, press
it up against the tin,
keep it nice and clean.
Careful not to eat into
the cheesecake too much.
And there we have it,
carefully loosen this.
Lovely, jubbly.
Oh wow.
Now because we turned that tin upside
down, you can just very
carefully slide it, look
at that, onto our platter.
Now let's get this garnished and sliced.
So to decorate this cheesecake what I
love to do is pipe some
freshly whipped cream rosettes
on top.
It's a really lovely contrast of color
and of flavor to the cheesecake.
And then my last finishing touch is a
little bit of grated chocolate on top.
Just to make it extra big and bold.
This recipe is an all around great one
because it can work for
the family or for a fancy
dinner party.
After all my hard work I'm going to cut
myself a nice big slice.
This is definitely for
the chocolate lovers.
It is rich, it is creamy, it is decadent.
Bitter sweet chocolate and cream cheese
have a lovely tang together.
I love to use those ingredients together.
This is sophisticated,
it's classy, it's fancy.
It's definitely my type of dessert.
I really hope you enjoyed this video and
if you do stick around
because you can check
out my lasagna and my
tiramisu completely from scratch.
I'll see you back here again really soon.
Oh my gosh I can't help
myself, I have to have more.