Armin had only one request for his birthday cake: it should involve chocolate. For Reasons, I wasn’t up to any great faff. So I opted for something I knew would be easy and hoped would be tasty: a fridge cheesecake, with a bit of chocolate for yum and strawberries for pretty. Believe me. It worked. It worked so well, in fact, that I caught Armin going back for sneaky seconds. Oh, that doesn’t mean anything? You don’t know Armin.
Yeah, the photo really doesn’t sell it. Sorry. But try this anyway. Soooo easy and so good.
My only mistake was not going nearly big enough on the strawberries. Next time, I’m going to either put a layer of chopped strawbs on the bottom, or cover the entire top with strawberry halves. Yummmm.
Awesome (strawberry) chocolate cheesecake
150g plain chocolate digestive biscuits
50g butter, melted
300g Philadelphia cream cheese
450ml double cream
200g caster sugar
1tbsp vanilla extract
150g dark chocolate, plus extra for grating
punnet of strawberries
Crush biscuits with melted butter. If you don’t have a food processor, I recommend chucking ’em in a ziploc baggie and bashing with a rolling pin. Satisfying and fast.
Spread biscuit mix on the bottom of a 22cm cake tin – either springform or loose-bottom. (Mine are all non-stick, but if yours aren’t, I imagine greasing first would be a good idea, non?) Chill.
Beat cream cheese with caster sugar, then add double cream and beat till stiff peaks form. Melt your chocolate and fold it in – don’t bother trying to mix evenly, a marbled effect is good. Mine came out way more mixed than intended but still works. Grate the extra chocolate, chop your strawbs (into small pieces if you want the bottom-layer option, into halves if decorating on top – or of course both.)
Assemble cake: chopped strawbs (optional), then filling, then decorate with grated choc and/or strawberry halves. Chill till set. (A few hours should do it.) Enjoy! Ooh, it just occurred to me, enjoy with a glass of pink bubbly… do. Although coffee is fine also. Killjoy.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 
This sounds great! Do you suppose it would work with the chocolate Philadelphia, or would that be overkill?
I haven’t actually tried the chocolate Philadelphia. I reckon that would be a good alternative if you didn’t want to add melted chocolate, but would be a bit much otherwise. I do think that the mix of chocolate and sweet-sour cheesecake flavour is what makes this version particularly nice – not sure if that would still come through with chocolate Philadelphia? (Presumably there’s one way to find out!)
If you do use the choc cheese – and frankly even if you don’t – it seems to me that it would be great to stir a bunch of thickly grated or chopped chocolate into the filling. Add some texture and flavour layering, as it were.
It actually does have a sour edge to it: I tried it a little while ago, and ever since I’ve been wondering whether it would work well in a dessert. I may just have to make two versions of the cheesecake, for research purposes: it’s a hard life! 😉