The Awesome Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake...and A Great Kitchen Tip

I love browsing through Peabody's Culinary Concoctions because she whips up the most amazing sounding and looking sweets! Just look at her Turtle Brownie Double Chocolate Mousse Bites, Nutella Ravioli Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake, Spice Cake with Caramel Mousse and Caramel Apple Topping...yum yum yum! I was drooling over her Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake pictures one day, and the wild boar suddenly shouted 'You have got to make this!', and so I did. And it was awesome! The 3 of us finished it in less than a week! It was so rich and creamy and the hazelnut/ nutella taste was really intense. I would suggest chilling the cake in the fridge overnight and enjoy it the next day...yea I know...but the flavours developed and it was yummier the next day!

I cut the recipe in half and made a 9-inch cake. Did some minor alterations to suit my taste such as cutting down the amount of sugar, adding nutella to the glaze, used coarsely ground hazelnuts for some added texture, left out Frangelico as I didn't want to buy the whole bottle and only use a teaspoon of it...

Ingredients: 9-inch cake
Adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

Hazelnut Cookie Crust:

• 170g Unsalted Butter - softened at room temperature
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbs Icing Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1 cup Plain Flour
• 1/2 cup Cornstarch
• 100g Blanched Hazelnuts - blended in a food processor

Cheesecake filling:

• 600g Cream Cheese - softened at room temperature
• 3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 tbs Plain Flour
• 50g cup Blanced Hazelnut - toasted & blended in a food processor
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 tbs Nutella
• 1 tbs Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

Chocolate glaze:

• 1/2 cup Bittersweet Chocolate - coarsely chopped
• 1 tbs Nutella
• 1/4 cup Double Cream

Directions:
For hazelnut cookie crust:

• Cream butter and sugar in a mixer.
• Beat in the egg.
• Mix together plain flour, cornstarch and blended hazelntus.
• Add flour mixture into butter mixture.

• Chill for about 3-4 hrs. Dough will harden and easier to handle.
• After chilled, preheat oven to 180 °C.
• Line the bottom of a cake pan with parchment paper (as shown below on a great tip to prepare the lining). Carefully spread the hazelnut cookie dough on the bottom of the cake pan. I used a spoon at first but it was a bit hard to spread because the dough was quite firm. I switched to my hands and afterwards, I smoothed out the surface with a spoon as the dough softened. The crust should be around 1/4-inch thick. I used slightly more than 3/4 of the dough only.

• Bake for 15 mins.
• Leave to cool. (Note that the crust won't be baked all the way through.)

• Wrap the outside of the pan with aluminium foil to avoid leakage of cheesecake batter and water from seeping into the pan while baking in a bain marie.

For Cheesecake filling:

• Preheat oven to 160 °C.
• Cream cheese and sugar in a mixer.
• Slowly add in eggs, one at a time.
• Mix in plain flour and blended hazelnuts.
• Mix in vanilla extract.
• Pour 1/3 of the batter into another mixing bowl.
• Mix nutella and cocoa powder into the 1/3 batter.
• After cookie crust has cooled, pour cream cheese filling (without nutella) on the crust.
• Pour nutella cream cheese filling onto batter.
• Cut through batter with a spatula a few times to create marbling effect. You won't see the effect after putting on the glaze, it's just for my own pleasure =P at least it looks nice before baking.
  

• Bake in a bain marie/ water bath for about 1 hr 15 mins or until center is slightly jiggly but perimeter is set. Remember to check after 1 hr. Unfortunately, my cheesecake cracked while baking =( I didn't put enough water for the water bath, so when I checked after 1 hr, there was only very little water left in the waterbath. This might have caused the crack.
  

• The cheesecake will shrink as it cools, so run a paring knife around the edge of the cheesecake to prevent any cracks.
• Let it cool to room temperature (about 2-3 hrs).

For chocolate glaze:

• Gently heat up cream.
• Add chopped chocolates and stir until melted.
• Remove from heat and mix in nutella.
• Leave to cool until warm to touch, spread on cooled cheesecake.
• Chill in refrigerator for at least 4 hrs to let flavours develop.
  

Here is a neat trick I learnt from watching Alton Brown's Good Eats:

How to line the bottom of a cake pan with parchment paper (a cartouche)

• Place your baking pan on a piece of parchment paper. Cut a square around the baking pan. Doesn't have to be a perfect square.
• Fold it in half.

• Fold in half again to create a smaller square.
• Fold it diagonally. You don't have to line up the corners.

• Fold the open corner down to meet the other side of the triangle.

• Place the tip of the paper in the center of the baking pan.

• Cut out excess parchment paper.

• Open up and line the bottom of a lightly greased cake pan.