BAILEYS CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE & PAVLOVA for a lovely family evening.

Happy Monday my easy peasers!

Hope you all had a great weekend.

We had a family evening this weekend with all my family.  It was a really really nice night with some lovely cuisine.

My parents hosted the evening at theirs and cooked some beautiful steaks for everyone.  Lovely juicy rib eye babies! 

There were sides of bean salad, garlic baby potatoes and oven cooked garlic potatoes and a simple green tossed salad.

Everyone pitched in and I made some desserts…..

 

BAILEY CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE and PAVLOVA.

I posted my pavlova recipe here previously so refer back on my blog for it.

Here’s a picture though and it was delicious…a great hit!

For my baileys chocolate cheesecake, here’s how I made it:

1.      Crush whatever biscuits you have lying in the press.  For this, I had rich tea, chocolate digestives and plain malted milk biscuits.  You will need to crush approx 400g for a good base, less or more depending on how much of a base you like.   Place them in a sealer bag and crush them with something like a meat pounder until the biscuits are crushed right down.  Or pop them into a blitzer and blitz them until they are completely crushed down.  This is how I do them.  To this I added 2 tbsp cacao powder.

2.      Place approx 125g butter/baking marg in a microwavable bowl and melt down on med heat or in a saucepan on med heat.  Once melted add a drop of vanilla extract and pour into mix into the biscuit mix and combine.  Topple mix into greased round spring form oven tin with the base lined with greaseproof paper.  Press the biscuit mix flat down, pushing out to the sides and smooth top.  Chill in fridge for about an hour until set.

3.      Meanwhile, prepare the filling by lightly whipping 600g room temp cream cheese in a mixer.  Beat in about 25ml baileys and 3 ½ oz icing sugar.  

4.      For this cheesecake I used 150ml whipped cream and 150ml crème fraiche whisked together and folded into the mix.  Add as much or as little grated dark chocolate and white chocolate as you wish and combine.

5.      When smooth and blended in, spoon evenly over the set biscuit base.  For the top of your cheesecake, sprinkle a good helping of roughly chopped white and dark chocolate.  Set in the fridge, covered with cling film for at lease 2 hours.  For best results leave to set overnight.