Decadent Triple Chocolate Cheesecake
Contributed by: John Wilder
Note: I don’t even like Cheesecake, but this sounds pretty darn cool! Thanks John…
For Crust
21/2 cups slivered almonds
¾ stick butter melted
For Cheesecake
4- 8 oz packages non fat cream cheese room temp
6 ozs or ¾ cup non fat sour cream or Yoplait Boston Crème Pie Yogurt
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup Splenda
4 eggs at room temp
½ tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
About 24 Hershey’s Almond Kisses or half bag approx enough to cover bottom of crust completely
1/3 approx of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup from a squeeze bottle
Container pre made chocolate frosting
About 12 maraschino cherries.
Place spring-form pan in the freezer for at least 30 minutes prior to forming crust in pan
For crust, pulse blend the almonds until ground into a fine meal. Melt the butter and combine with ground almonds thoroughly and set in the fridge for about 5 minutes.
Remove pan from freezer and take crust mixture from fridge and with a large tablespoon start pressing crumb mixture against the sides of the pan. Finish up with the remainder pressed into the bottom of the pan. You want to have the crust at least 1/8 inch thickness on the sides of the pan. Place pan back into the freezer while preparing batter for cheesecake.
For Cheesecake, cream together the non fat cream cheese and the yogurt or non fat sour cream, then cream together the sugar and Splenda.
Add eggs one at a time until thoroughly mixed. Then add the extracts and thoroughly mix
Remove wrappers from kisses and place in the bottom of the pan until the whole bottom of the pan is covered. Pour batter over the kisses. Take the squeeze bottle of Hershey’s Syrup and place the nozzle down in the batter and begin squeezing out the syrup moving it around until you have squeezed about 1/3 of the bottle into the batter. You can swirl a knife around to create a marbled effect if you like. Place a sheet pan in the bottom rack of oven and fill with water and place the spring-form pan in the oven on the middle rack for one hour at 300 degrees. After the hour is up, leave cheesecake in the oven until cool for another hour with the oven off. Remove from oven and chill for at least 4 hours before decorating.
Decorate the cheesecake with chocolate icing placed in a piping bag with a medium or large star tip and pipe stars of chocolate frosting alternating with the maraschino cherries.
Serves 10-12 depending upon how you slice the cake
John Wilder is a Cool Old Guy from Indiana and a regular contributor to CoolOldGuys.org