Recipe - White Chocolate, Mascarpone and Puffed Wheat Cheesecake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

White Chocolate, Mascarpone and Puffed Wheat Cheesecake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

This is most definitely not a recipe for every day, it is delicious and very decadent! It is something of an amalgam of recipes because I went to a birthday party the other day and they had this wonderful birthday cheesecake. I asked about the recipe, as you do, but didn't get all the details, hence I used what I had gathered and looked at other recipes. I have reduced the amount of ganache in this recipe to that which I used when I made it, because there was a little too much of it.

This makes a cheesecake that will easily serve 12-15 people - it served 5 of us and we only got through a third.

Equipment

• 1 heat proof bowl
• 1 large mixing bowl
• grease proof paper
• 10.5'' / 27cm spring form tin (you could use a slightly smaller one, just make sure it's a deep one)
• 1 shallow dish
• 1 medium saucepan
• spatulas and spoons

Ingredients

For the cheesecake

• 280g / 1 1/4 cup / 10oz cream cheese
• 250g / 1 1/8 cup / 9oz mascarpone
• 300ml / 1 1/4 cup double (heavy) cream
• 2x150g (10.6oz) white chocolate
• 200g / 7oz rich tea fingers (closes US equiv is probably graham crackers)
• 50g / 1.8oz puffed wheat
• drizzle of honey

For the ganache

• 200ml / 1 cup double (heavy) cream
• 200g / 7oz dark chocolate

Anything you like to decorate.

Instructions

1. Line the base of the spring form tin with the grease proof paper.
2. Lay the biscuit fingers flat in the base of the tin, covering as much of it as possible. (Breaking the biscuits into bits can be used to fill in large holes).
3. Lay the puffed wheat in the base of the shallow bowl and drizzle with honey. Then stir to coat. (You can use Honey Monster Puffs that are pre-coated, but the plain ones were much cheaper, hence this work around :)).
4. Melt the chocolate in the heat proof bowl. (I microwave it on full for 30s at a time, but you can also gently heat it above a saucepan of hot water as well). Leave to cool.
5. Whip the cream until it is beginning to thicken.
6. Add the cream cheese and the mascarpone and whisk again until it begins to hold its shape (not too much or you will end up with cottage cheese).
7. Pour in the white chocolate and mix vigorously with a spatula. (It might look grainy for a few moments, but don't worry, it is supposed to become much stiffer).
8. Add the puffed wheat and mix through.
9. Carefully add the cheesecake mixture over the layer of rich tea biscuits, smoothing out to the sides.
10. Add another layer of rich tea biscuits on top and refrigerate.
11. To make the ganache, break the chocolate into a heat proof bowl.
12. Put the 200ml of cream into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Boil gently for 1 min watching carefully to make sure it does not bubble over.
13. Pour the cream over the chocolate and mix to melt it all together to make a lovely shiny fluid.
14. Remove the cheesecake from the fridge and pour over the ganache.
15. Decorate as required and return to the fridge until needed.

The puffed wheat give this cheesecake the most wonderful texture. It was described to me like Kinder Chocolate with cereals, but I've never had one of those so I can't compare :). All I know was it was yummy.