My Valentine

Yesterday's post came about because I was making a shopping list for my Valentine to Y - a chocolate turtle cheesecake, one of his favorites. I've made an extremely similar cake before, only totally blew it (and then fixed what parts of it I could). I basically used the same chocolate cheesecake recipe that I have linked to a number of times, but with one minor twist. This recipe is delicious.

I started with the crust - crushed up Oreos. No added butter or sugar as the recipe suggests.

Just crush about 12 or 15 of those bad boys up, put them in the tin and then press them into the base.

Then you get cracking on the cake. It starts with creaming the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla - I don't use the vanilla bean because frankly it seems unnecessary with all of the other flavors I have going on - after that, you add the flour.

 

Next add in some melted chocolate. Yum. Melted chocolate.

 



 

 

Once that is nice and creamy, you move to the eggs.

 

 

Once those were mixed in, things got a little bit crazy around here! I thought that a turtle cheesecake might be nice with some crushed pecans thrown into the cake itself. I also considered putting in some caramel, but I got nervous and didn't want to blow Y's only Valentine's gift. That would have been really lame. One day, however, one day I plan on putting caramel into the actual cake, instead of just putting it on top. I want more of a caramel flavor and I think that would make this cake even better. Anyway, I threw a few handfuls of pecans into a bag and had K go at it with a rolling pin. He was stoked. 

 

 

Then I mixed about 2/3rds of the crushed pecans into the batter, making sure to break up any whole ones that escaped K's wrath.

 





 

Finally I poured the batter into the pan and we were ready for the oven.

 

 

When I got it out of the oven, there was a tiny crack, but K was in desperate need of something or the other and I didn't run my knife around the edge of the cake - sorry cake, but the kid comes first. Then I forgot about it. I came back an hour or so later to find the crack had gotten HUGE!

 

Although I am not 100% sure on this, I am going to assume that the crack would not have gotten so gnarly had I just run the knife around it straight out of the oven instead of hour(s) later. Honestly, however, I have no idea why this happened.

It's not that big of a deal since it is a cake just for us (and a friend or two), so I just carried on like it wasn't there. I drizzled some leftover caramel over the top. I am still not quite sure why that caramel had not been eaten, but alas it made my life a bit easier. 

Then I sprinkled on the remaning crushed pecans.

Melted a few squares of chocolate.

Drizzled that on top and stuck this guy into the fridge!

I made it the night before Valentine's because I knew I was going to be mental busy on the actual day. It was awesome to just pull a cake out of the fridge and have nothing to do for it to be ready to eat. And eat we did!

And it was good.

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day!!!