Canter's Chocolate Cheesecake

*Post by Angela.

Even though I am consistently a disaster when it comes to making dessert, given Mark's sweet tooth, I feel like I should attempt it every once in awhile. Perusing the L.A. Time's Culinary SOS column the other day, I ran across the recipe for Canter's chocolate cheesecake and decided to give it a shot.

  

List of ingredients for the crust:

• 1 box chocolate graham cookies
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 6 tbsp very softened butter

First I made crumbles out of the graham cookies by giving them a whir in my food processor. The only chocolate graham cookies I could find were those in the shapes of animals, so this step of the process sort of felt wrong...

I poured the crumbs into a bowl, then using my hands, mixed together them with the sugar and the butter until thoroughly combined - the mixture should resemble wet sand. I pressed the mixture into my springform pan (Canter's version uses a loaf pan, I believe, but I don't have one of those and I do have a springform pan, so there you go), and moved onto the filling.

List of ingredients for the filling:

• 12 oz. cream cheese (one and a half boxes)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips

I preheated the oven to 300 degrees, then dumped the cream cheese into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer and whisked it for about 5-7 minutes, until it was nice and fluffy.

I left the whisk action going and added in the sugar, lemon zest, and vanilla.

After about 2 minutes of mixing (scraping down the sides as I went), I added in the eggs, one at a time.

Finally, I folded in the sour cream.

I poured the filling over the crust, smoothed it out, then topped it off with the mini chocolate chips and stuck in the oven to bake for about 55 minutes.

I removed the cheesecake from the oven, let it cool, then covered it and snuck it past Mark into the refrigerator overnight to set up completely.

By the time I made it home from work the next day, the sweets monster had already dug in and proclaimed it to be "pretty good," which I'm gonna mark down as a success. This is a pretty classic cheesecake, but I really liked the little zing that the lemon zest gave it. And the crust, as simple as it was to make, was delicious. I can't wait to get to Canter's to try out the real deal, and maybe pick up inspiration for my next baking attempt.