If you’re with me on Twitter you’ll have seen me tweeting about this baking project. This is a full post summarizing the results.

So. After church a few weeks ago I was flipping channels and came across an episode of Eat, Shrink & Be Merry on the Food Network. In that particular episode they were battling against La Rocca over chocolate cheesecake. They managed to come up with a rich looking chocolate cheesecake that was lower in fat with higher protein content. They dubbed it the: Shockolate Cheesecake (link to recipe). Shocking, indeed. They subbed out part of the cream cheese with cottage cheese. It was all run through a blender so no one would have noticed a change in texture. They swore that it tasted as if you’d have used all cream cheese. The finished product won in the taste test side by side. At that point I figured that it would make a good project to do one weekend.

I went out to No Frills on Saturday and picked up the necessary ingredients. The light sour cream was 5% milk fat. I honestly would have thought the 1% was the light one like with milk, but I guess that’s different with sour cream. I didn’t want to use the non-fat stuff (which was the 1%) because apparently you can taste the difference. The recipe also used 1% cottage cheese and light cream cheese. All healthier, but would it be obvious?

Assembling it was actually really easy. I say that pretty often, but seriously, this was simple. I used a brownie mix for the crust. Mixing the batter involved adding water, and egg, and oil and using a spoon. The cream cheese involved stuffing the milk ingredients into a blender, melting some chocolate (put a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water–easy) and combining some dry ingredients, then mixing it all together. EASY. Honestly, my main concern was ending up with a really cracked end product after baking. I tried to follow a really gradual cooling process. I cracked the door open a little bit, then widened the door a little bit more. About 45 minutes into cooling, I had a look and it was still in one piece. I was quite happy. Next time I checked though I saw that the thing developed a big-ass crevasse the size of the Grand Canyon. I was disappointed. Sure, it’d still taste great (I assumed) but I was hoping for a perfect end result. The crack made for a great picture though. Maybe I beat the batter too much–especially after adding the eggs. Maybe I sped the cooling process way too much. Who knows?

After it cooled to room temperature, I let it cool in the fridge overnight. At lunch today I cut up some strawberries and melted some chocolate. I decorated the top with all of that, and honestly, you can’t even tell that the crack was there. We ate the cheesecake after lunch. The recipe said to cut it thinly because it’s particularly rich feeling. Holy crap, they were right. That was a ridiculously rich, chocolaty cheesecake. I approve! Two thumbs up! Thing is, I can’t eat much of it, like, at all. I know it’s lower fat and such, but damn, it doesn’t feel like it at all. I know now that I have another good recipe on hand that’s bound to impress.

Next time, I want to consider using a classic graham cracker crust. I’ve also been thinking of using something other than chocolate. Perhaps mint? I think that would be a grasshopper cheesecake, yes? Thing is, it’ll be a very long time before I even try doing this recipe again. It’s great, but it’s the kind of thing that requires a lot of time between instances.