Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Tea time will be back soon.  I am sconed out at the moment and needed a breather from all that scone baking, In the mean time, I bring you this lovely cheesecake.  Swoon.

Some time ago it was my husbands birthday.  We celebrated with some delicious chocolate peanut butter cheesecake. I made a few mistakes but in the end it was okay.

One of the mistakes I made was that I overfilled the water.  When I make cheesecake, at least in recent times, I put it in a water bath.  I find the cheesecake to be more moist and it bakes better.  You will see this idea in a lot of recipes. It helps with not getting that infamous crack on top.

You need to have a piece of foil large enough to cover the bottom of your cheesecake.  I find that the standard foil here in the US is narrow, not wide enough to get a nice seal on the bottom of a 9" round. Most times I do not have the wider heavy duty foil.  If you want to do the water bath I recommend getting the wider foil.

The other mistake I made was not putting enough of the batter mixed with the peanut butter.  It got too thick and dint go on the cheesecake evenly.  Also the chocolate portion was dulled by too much batter.  Next time, half and half.  This will make the chocolate portion of the cheesecake more chocolatey and the peanut putter portion more pourable and spreadable.

Yes, there will be a next time because it still was good.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

crust
1 cup finely ground chocolate wafer cookies (4 ounces)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar

filling
4 ounces semisweet chocolate (55 to 61 percent cacao), finely chopped
4 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
Pinch of coarse salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grind chocolate wafer cookies into crumbs, mix with melted butter and sugar. Line bottom and a little up the sides of a 9 inch round cheesecake pan, Bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven.

In a mixing bowl place cream cheese and sugar and salt.  Blend together for about 3 minutes.  Add in vanilla.  Add in eggs one at a time, mixing after each one. Scrape down sides. Mix just until blended. Divide batter in two.

In the same mixer with half the batter, add peanut butter and blend until combined.  Pour into a bowl and set aside.  Melt chocolate in bain marie or microwave, making sure just to heat it until it melts. In that same mixer combine the reserved half of batter and add in the chocolate.

Pour the chocolate batter into the prepared crust cheesecake pan.  Spoon peanut butter batter over the top. Smooth.  Place in oven on center rack.  Bake for approx. one hour and 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on it.  You want it to be slightly jiggly in center before you take it out.

This following alternate way of baking is not necessary but it will yield a very moist cheese cake.

If you would like to bake it the way I did (ensuring that you cover the bottom better than I did), cover the bottom of cheesecake pan in foil, making sure it is tight around.  Place in in a larger baking pan. Pour in some water to the larger baking pan (under the cheesecake pan) about an inch.  It should not be anywhere near the top of the foil on the cheesecake pan.  Once the cooking time is complete, open the oven door a crack and let the oven cool to room temperature before removing the cheesecake.