Help me solve a chocolate cheesecake conundrum

I was thinking of making another cheesecake today, I have talked about a mini cheesecake project here recently ( Question regarding my celebrated cheesecake recipe - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board ), but when getting the cream cheese, I saw that they had the chocolate version, with Marabou (delicious Swedish chocolate)- so I grabbed some of them thinking I would experiment with a chocolate cheesecake.

I am now about to be underway but wondering how to actually go about it- what to pair it with. I was planning on replacing my usual sour cream topping (see link with recipe [scroll down a little] if you’re not with me) with a coffee topping- just throwing VERY strong coffee in there. For color and flavor’s sake. Maybe some cocoa powder too.

So so far so good. I think. Unless the sour cream/coffee combination is weird, which I think will be ok. Thoughts on this?

I usually use a fresh fruit decoration plan with some kind of fruit sauce (with the plain cheesecake, I mean). I was thinking of making some kind of ginger coulis with candied ginger for decoration for this, but now time seems short for this. I was thinking of dropping that idea, though I think it would be great, and just roasting some kind of nuts and covering the top with that, either just crushed or in some geometric pattern, if I can get enough nice perfect specimens. In that case, I would make a caramel sauce.

So- does the idea of a chocolate/coffee cheesecake with nuts and a caramel sauce sound like a good thing? The sourness/tang of cream cheese is a bit of wild card, if you ask me. Will this work or will it be weird? Is the ginger idea, though probably not happening this time, a bad one?

Any and all thoughts and opinions about this welcome!

Thank you in advance,

BB

I don’t know about the sour/tang with the chocolate and I base this only on having tried a chocolate yogurt. I didn’t like it. The chocolate tasted very sour. I have had cheesecake with chocolate chunks in it that were ok but if the chocolate is throughout the cream cheese or the sour cream topping, I dunno. I’d be cautious. The caramel sauce and nuts sound good as does the coffee.

ETA I made a great typo first time through: “caramel sauce and nuts sound goo”; well, yeah.

Thanks for the reply!

This is exactly the sort of effect I am afraid of. I have seen but never tried the chocolate/yogurt thing, and remember thinking it sounded weird.

This product I did try on bread, and it’s awesome. No weirdness. It was like Nutella, only choc-choc-chocolatey and sort of…full-bodied and complex. As I type this, I’m kind of thinking that if the cream cheese itself is not odd (to me, anyway!), then chances are good I will think the resulting cheesecake is correspondingly not odd.

I think I’m going to give this a try- the coffee/sour cream topping option* with nuts and some sort of caramel sauce.

*another vague concern- will the sour cream/coffee combo be offensive?

I could just copout and put cocoa powder in for color- I think taste wise the original topping would be fine, but Liquid Paper white in a thin layer on top of a brown chocolate cheesecake would just be wrong, IMHO

The presentation you describe sounds yummy, but rich. I like the coffee idea. What do you think about adding a spoonful of instant coffee and half a teaspoon of cinnamon to the sour cream? That would add subtle taste, and also break up that pure white.

I should probably offer an update. Or a post-mortem, as it were. The whole thing went off well, the cheesecake was delicious but VERY rich. I like a cheesecake I can pig out on, if you know what I mean. While opening all those packs of chocolate cream cheese, I remember wondering if I shouldn’t substitute one normal for the chocolate. I probably should have, retrospectively.

Possibly due to the super high sugar content of the chocolate cream cheese, the edges of the cheesecake had a mealy texture I disliked but strangely others loved. I thought it tasted slightly burnt and was (this is weird) slightly reminiscent of a wet dog (!). It’s something I’ve tasted in desserts before though, this wet dog taste.

For the top, I ended up making it two-tones of brown in a pattern of the logo of the company this might eventually before (this worked really well, surprisingly, the two shades didn’t bleed at all and it was very high def and sharp looking). Instant coffee in one and a cocoa powder for a darker brown. I made a gooey caramel sauce which was probably the most successful part of the whole endeavor.

I don’t think I will be trying this again, though it was perfectly edible and delicious. Just not mind-blowingly good, as I find plain cheesecake to be. Not worth the fat, calories, money, or effort. Still pretty good, though.

I find putting cocoa powder in a cheesecake makes it every-so-slightly grainy. May be better off melting some unsweetened chocolate and mixing it in with the cream cheese.

The surprising thing about cheesecake (at least to me) is that it is surprisingly versatile. I’ve done a tiramisu cheesecake flavored with espresso and I thought the coffee flavor went just fine with the tangy cheesecake. I always thought mint chocolate chip cheesecake sounded revolting-- until I made one, and it’s actually really good.

The only relative disaster was an attempt at a low fat black forest cheesecake… never again!

Thanks for the tip! I found some chocolate cream cheese and used that. Your advice probably saved me some time and money. I was considering just that for the next round of experiments- cocoa powder in the cream cheese. I can’t find unsweetened chocolate where I live, that seems like the most ideal. But I will just use a very dark chocolate and estimate the sugar adjustment, methinks.

-BB