Lindt Chocolate Easter Cheesecake

Easter for me, growing up, has always meant camping and lots and lots of chocolate. Year after year my parents would pack myself and my three sisters into the car and we'd drive up to the Murray River to camp amongst all the other tents lining the banks of the river. We always had so much fun, there were countless other kids to play with and I loved riding my bike around the dirt tracks and playing in the sand. The weather was always beautiful there with warm sunny days, and cold nights spent next to a huge warm fire. On Easter morning we'd always wake up to find piles of Easter eggs and bunnies at the end of our beds. While, after a while, our camping trips slowly died off - mainly due to the river becoming too crowded over the Easter period - the tradition of waking up on Easter morning to find the 'Easter Bunny' had visited never died off. In fact, just this Sunday I woke up to find a box of my favourite Lindt Stracciatella balls and a white chocolate Cadbury bunny sitting on my bedside table. Which was why, when my sister decided to have a family lunch at her house on Easter Sunday and asked me to make something for dessert, I immediately knew that I had to try to make something chocolatey and extremely decadent! And this recipe that I found, for a Lindt chocolate Cheesecake fit both of those categories. 

Ingredients:

1 pack chocolate biscuits

575g cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla

100ml cream

4 eggs

80g unsalted butter, melted

50g sour cream

200g Lindt 70% Cocoa

140g Caster Sugar

pinch sea salt

6 Lindt Gourmet Eggs

6 Lindt Lindor Balls

To make:

1. Preheat the oven to 120ºC
2. For the base, place biscuits in a food processor and blend until ground reasonably fine. Mix in enough melted butter for mixture to just bind together, press evenly over base of lightly greased tin and smooth it with the back of a spoon. Set aside.

3. For the cheesecake mixture, place cream cheese into an electric mixer and mix until softened. Once the cheese is softened, mix in the sour cream and sugar, continue mixing until smooth.

4. Place cream into a saucepan and gently bring to the boil, remove from heat once boiling. Break up the chocolate and mix into cream, stir until melted and set aside to cool slightly.

5. Mix chocolate into the cheese mixture and once again scrape down sides.

6. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

7. Pour enough cheesecake mixture into the springform to cover the base.

8. Unwrap the gourmet eggs and the Lindor balls and arrange Lindor in a circle in the centre with a circle of gourmet eggs surrounding the Lindor.

9. Gently cover Lindor and eggs with a little cheese cake mixture and lightly tap springform to avoid air pockets.
10. Pour in remaining cheesecake and once again lightly tap

11. Place springform into a deep baking tray and pour about 2 cm deep hot water into the base of the tray. This will aid the cooking process and prevent the cake from becoming dry and crumbly.
12. Bake cheesecake for approximately 60 minutes. The cake is ready when it is set on the sides but remains slightly soft in the centre.
13. Completely cool cake in the springform tin.

And here's the finished product. Let me just say....this cheesecake was delicious! I've never actually tasted a chocolate cheesecake before this one, but it was so smooth and rich and the Lindt balls just added that little bit more decadence! I went to the Lindt store in Melbourne the day before Easter Sunday to buy the Lindt balls and eggs but they didn't have any eggs left so I just used all Lindor balls. I got a couple of different flavours though - some milk chocolate, some milk/white ones and some cookies and cream. Delish!

Recipe Source:
Yahoo Food
Lindt Easter Cheesecake