balance

Recent fundraising events for UIUC's Association of Food Technologists gave me the opportunity to revisit my easy-to-make tiramisu cheesecake. Thanks to a generous donation of ready-to-eat cheesecake filling from Kraft foods, I whipped together 45 individual cheesecakes in less than two hours. With a little help. :)

Making mass quantities of the chocolate layer clued me in to a necessary modification to my quick and dirty chocolate mousse. Not suprisingly, dumping in 1.5 cups of melted chocolate to a tub of cold cheesecake filling results in an annoying mess of cheesecake with chocolate clumps. To avoid this misery (you'd think I would have learned ages ago when attempting to make a nasty tofu-based mousse, but no), "temper" your chocolate by mixing in a small fraction of your cheesecake filling with the chocolate directly, then add the chocolate cheesecake mix to the remaining cheesecake. Much better.

Recipe:
1 tub Philadelphia ready-to-eat cheesecake filling, divided into thirds (1/3 for chocolate, 1/3 for plain, 1/3 for coffee)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 Tbsp Instant coffee, or coffee substitute like Pero or Postum, dissolved in 1 tsp hot water

Melt chocolate chips in the microwave for 30 seconds. Stop, stir, and heat for additional 10 second bursts followed by stirring until completely melted. Stir in a nice spoonful of the cheesecake filling to "temper" the chocolate, and then stir the chocolate/cheesecake mixture into the remaining portion of the cheesecake mix that is dedicated to chocolate.

Stir the 1/3 of the tub that is the plain because it will make it easier to pipe into the cup if it's stirred.

Mix the dissolved instant coffee or coffee substitute into the remaining 1/3. Taste and adjust with additional flavoring as necessary. I've never made this with real coffee, so I have no idea how much you'd need, but I imagine espresso would be the way to go. Or Kahlua. Or something else that you love.

Using a piping bag, pipe into small cups in layers, or layer into a graham cracker crust. Serve. Realize it's way too rich for the serving size you made. Sigh and eat it anyway.

And just for fun, because I rarely post pictures . . . Individual chocolate cakes (baked in a Texas muffin pan) covered with chocolate ganache. Yum.