- Do you love chocolate?
Do you love cheesecake?
Say hello to my chocolate cheesecake.
This has everything you could ever want in cake form.
Hey, you're watching a "Preppy Kitchen" where I,
John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
This cake is gonna change your life.
So let's get started.
First off, let's make our chocolate crust.
This is so easy and delicious.
I'm using a nine-inch springform pan,
and you could use an eight inch one if you want.
You could even use a 10 inch one.
Your cake will just be thinner.
So, FYI.
24 chocolate sandwich cookies,
as they're called, or Oreos, into a food processor,
you can also just chop them up and then crush them
in a plastic bag if you want.
Give 'em a good pulse.
All right, after they're finely chopped,
we're gonna drizzle in some butter while we pulse.
So, by some butter, I mean, five tablespoons just by the by.
It'll be kind of a mess in here.
If you're not using a food processor,
you would just drizzle the melted butter over the crumbs
and then mix with a spatula.
Get that really sharp blade outta there.
Use a spatula just to mix things up a bit.
You'll have pools of butter hanging out at the bottom.
Now, dump that all into your springform pan.
There's no real prep for a springform pan.
You just kind of get the cheesecake out of there at the end.
I'll show you at the very end of this video,
how to dismount your cheesecake onto a cake plate.
I get a lot of questions about that, but in the meantime,
just use your spatula to move those crumbs around.
I'm not gonna go all the way up to the top.
I actually love the way this cake looks with the three tones
of the dark chocolate base, the chocolate filling,
and then the chocolate whipped cream we're gonna make.
Have you made chocolate with cream?
It's amazing.
So just press, press, press, press, press.
Now you use a flat bottomed, measuring cup or glass,
and just further compact it down.
Actually, use your fingers first.
Now we can press down and press to the side a bit.
This crust is one, delicious,
and two, keeping our filling from burning on the bottom.
So, it's also making it easier for you to cut pieces
and serve them.
Bake for eight to 10 minutes at 350,
you want this to crisp up.
You don't want a soggy bottom, but don't burn it.
That would not taste great.
Into the oven.
My crust is out of the oven and cooling over there.
And while it cools,
we're gonna make an amazing ganache
to flavor our chocolate cheesecake.
So here's the deal,
I'm using one cup of bittersweet chocolate
and then three quarters of a cup
of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
In you go.
I like that nice combination of like,
a little bit sweet, a little bit bitter,
but you could use all bittersweet, all semi-sweet.
It is your cake.
You do you.
Onto my chocolate chips,
I'm pouring one quarter cup of hot, freshly-brewed coffee.
The coffee is gonna make a really pungent strong one,
but it's gonna be amazing mixed in
with all the other ingredients.
Give this a minute, let it hang out,
and then we're gonna pop this into the microwave
for like 20-second intervals.
Give it a stir and then just like let it sit.
And yes, I drink a lotta coffee.
(upbeat music)
So, stir that together and then just let it set aside.
You can give it a final stir to get all the bumps out,
but there's a lot of residual heat
that will melt the remaining chocolate.
You don't wanna heat that chocolate too much.
It'll burn it.
If you're thinking, oh my gosh, John, too much coffee.
I don't like coffee, I don't drink coffee.
That's fine.
You could definitely use just plain milk,
quarter cup of milk to make a regular ganache.
It'll taste amazing still.
But I personally just enjoy how that coffee
will bring out the chocolate flavor.
You're not gonna taste it, in my humble opinion,
but you can definitely do that substitution.
Set this aside, give it a final stir.
It'll be perfect for mixing in.
You don't wanna mix it in when it's really hot though, so.
Set aside.
Onto the mixing part.
Let's make this delicious filling starting
with 24 ounces or three packages
of room-temperature, cream cheese.
I had to warm this up in the microwave,
just like 15 seconds here and there
because it was ice cold.
All right, add your paddle attachment in there.
By the way, you could use a whisk attachment,
but you don't wanna whip too much air into here.
It could help the cheesecake crack.
We're gonna cover it all anyways.
So it doesn't really matter,
but if a cracked cake bothers you, that's why.
Start moving it around.
That looks nice and creamy.
I will be beating this up a bit first.
Now drizzle in one cup or 200 grams of sugar.
I'm gonna add in a pinch of salt, there we go.
Right now you can give the bowl just a little scrape down.
You want a cream cheese filling to be homogenous, no lumps,
nothing like unmixed at the bottom.
So, scraping the bowl down is always a good idea.
And we'll do this a couple times, so bear with me.
Let's add in a quarter cup of sour cream.
Sour cream in a cheesecake just brings
in the creaminess even more
and just a little bit of tang as a contrast,
you don't want everything super sweet.
You need to have balance.
There you go.
Mix it up.
While that's mixing, we're gonna add
an optional tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Our mixture's looking nice and creamy
so now it's time for four eggs.
Add them in one at a time and really let it mix
so everything is incorporated.
Okay.
I will be doing another scrape down.
I need to find my bigger spatula.
What is this little tiny thing?
Okay, so this cake has three tablespoons of flour.
So indulgent.
I'm gonna sift it in as we go,
give it a little headstart
and then run it on low and just tap that flour in.
You could definitely just sprinkle it in though.
It's not a big deal.
It's just me being me.
Okay, I saw a couple of lumps in there.
Not on my watch.
Now it's time to add in
our really indulgent, super-rich chocolate ganache.
The mixer could be running or not, it doesn't really matter.
Now we can mix in that chocolate.
That's nice.
Love that color.
So the inside looks beautiful,
the outside looks lily white, not acceptable.
This is your last scrape down of the day, just by the by.
Okay, last mix.
All right, that looks glorious.
Now it's time to pour it into our crust
and get it into the oven.
So pour that into the crust.
Oh my gosh, the color I cannot stand it.
It is like the perfect chocolate color.
Just give it a little level jiggle, jiggle, jiggle.
If you want, you can just kind of scrape that around.
We're gonna pop this into the oven at 325
for 20 minutes, and then reduce the temperature
to 300 and bake an additional 30 minutes.
If you want, you can add a little ramekin full of water
into the oven to like steam things up,
but that's optional, not necessary.
My cheesecake is chilled,
which means it's time to make the ganache
and the whipped cream and everything else.
So I'm using half a cup,
but you could use a third of a cup of chocolate.
I kind of want an extra thick layer
and you're gonna see why in a moment.
And then a third of a cup of heavy cream.
Give this a couple of 20-second bursts in the microwave.
It might just be one or two,
and then we're gonna be right back
for our delicious ganache.
This ganache looks really thin right now,
but it'll set up really, really, really fast
when it's on our chilled cheesecake.
So don't worry about it.
Just let it hang out and do its thing
while we whip up that chocolate whipped cream,
this is amazing.
And you're gonna be putting it on everything.
Let's go.
For the chocolate whipped cream,
I'm adding two cups or like 480 milliliters
of cold, heavy whipping cream into a bowl.
One quarter cup of powdered sugar,
two teaspoons of vanilla extract.
And then the secret ingredient is
just a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder.
Three to be exact.
Now cocoa powder is notoriously clumpy
so I like to sift mine in just to catch any lumps
before they give me a problem later on.
And three.
Sift that in.
Ooh, cloudy.
Pop your whisk attachment on and then mix it on low
to get it started.
Low, low, low.
Once it's mixed in,
you can begin gradually increasing the speed.
It'll make things less messy.
Trust me, I know.
I would normally never do this for whipped cream,
but there's like some cocoa powder nonsense happening here.
Cocoa powder has a lot of fat in it,
which is why it clumps up.
And it's also a bit hydrophobic.
So it does not like water,
it likes other fats like butter.
Mind you, the cream has a lot of fat in it,
but still, there was some resistance to mixing.
Continue whipping.
(mixer whirring)
I'm still watching it.
What do you think of the color?
What do you think of the taste?
Well, let's take a taste and see.
(upbeat music)
No, the taste is great.
You can see, I have nice, really stiff peaks.
It's gonna be perfect for piping.
Now I have a confession to make,
my cheesecake cracked in the oven.
Okay, wanna see it?
What, what?
It just happens sometimes, but it's okay.
We're gonna cover this completely.
It's gonna be really beautiful and no one will ever know,
except for you and me.
I wanna show you how to dismount the cheesecake
onto a cake stand.
I get a lotta questions about that.
I tried doing this in a different video
and I realized that I had put the springform pan together
with the bottom upside down so it was trapped.
It was like a nightmare.
But this time I did it the right way
because the springform pan only attaches one way.
Here, you can see that we have these really nice layers.
And what you can normally do is kind of just lift it up.
So push down in the middle and pop it up if it's baked
and try adjusting it.
This is gonna slide right off, so excited.
And then just, there you go.
Really easy.
Just the way baking should be.
Okay, center that out.
Right now, we're gonna cover the top with our ganache
and you can see it's set.
Pour some of that onto your cheesecake.
Whoa, that's beautiful.
And now use an offset spatula or knife
to just smooth out a layer towards the edge.
Give it a little jiggle, help level things out.
And we can pop this into the fridge to set completely.
It should only take like two minutes.
So, I'll be right back.
So the boys are having lunch right now.
You might hear them in the background, but in the meantime,
we're gonna finish this cake.
I'm transferring my chocolate whipped cream
into a piping bag fitted with an 846 attachment.
That's like a large closed star.
It's one of my favorite piping tips.
We're gonna make little tiny corkscrews while we turn.
There we go, so easy.
It's always better to underfill your bag
than overfill it because it's much easier to grasp
and have control over
if the bag's not completely like bulging out.
Ridiculous.
Okay, there we go.
Look at that.
Let's see how it cuts up now.
The secret to a clean cut for cheesecake is
to wet your knife and clean it after each cut.
So, in you go.
Look at those layers of chocolate, Oreo base,
a chocolate filling, chocolate ganache,
and whipped chocolate cream.
It is beyond the beyond, delicious.
Before I take a bite, if you like this recipe,
check out my cheesecake playlist.
All the cheesecakes, all the deliciousness
in one playlist, just for you.
Now it's time for a bite.
That is so good, it should basically be a crime.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
If you liked this video,
hit that like button and subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.