Something Witty About Birthdays Here

I decided to go out on a kind of limb for my birthday cake, and I found a recipe in my mom’s cookbook/binder. I picked one of those inserts that all moms inevitably have in their recipe collections. This specific one, a cheesecake with a chocolate swirl, is from the Great American Home Baking collection. This was my first time making cheesecake, and I have to admit that I didn’t quite realize that it was baked.



My birthday chocolate cheesecake was, at first taste, a real let-down. Even though I blended the cream cheese at room temperature for at least fifteen minutes, I could not get the small lumps out. For whatever reason, the three packets of cream cheese I had purchased had decided to just bead up. This really took away from the overall attractiveness of the cake for me; when you sliced it, you could see a cross-section of cream cheese blobs, instead of a delightfully smooth and flawless surface.



The really surprising part of this cake was the frosting. I had never heard of a cheesecake with frosting and my mom was skeptical, but it ended up not being too sweet, and it had a delicious tangy flavor, thanks to the sour cream.



Although the cake never smoothed out, the flavor kept getting better, which is actually an excellent thing to hope for with birthday cake. I only let my mom take a small portion to work, so that I could actually get to eat some of my own cake this year, and I ended up eating about half of it by the end of a week and a half. Which means: my birthday cheesecake was victorious! If I can ever find out what I did wrong with the cream cheese, I will definitely make it again.



Chocolate Cheesecake
Makes one 9-inch cheesecake

2 cups chocolate wafer crumbs
5 tablespoons melted butter

3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
5 large eggs
2 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted
1/2 cup sour cream

In a medium bowl, mix together chocolate crumbs and melted butter until well-blended. Press into 9-inch a springform pan.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Next, make the filling. Ina large bowl, beat together cream cheese, sugar, and eggs at medium speed until smooth and fluffy. Spoon half of cream cheese mixture into crust.

Stir chocolate into remaining cream cheese mixture until well-blended. Drizzle over batter in crust to make swirls.

Bake for 50 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack and cool completely. Transfer cheesecake to a serving plate, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.

Uncover cheesecake and carefully remove the side of the pan. To make the frosting, mix chocolate and sour cream together in a small bowl. Spread over cheesecake and chill briefly until set.