Baked Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake—Prototype 2:
 
It had been more than half of a year since I made Prototype 1. Since then, I had done many refinements to the "chocolate only" and "peanut butter only" cheesecakes. It was now time to try another "Resse's" prototype.

I built this one based on my latest recipes at this point, Prototype 12 of my chocolate cheesecakes and Prototype 4 of my peanut butter cheesecakes. However, I felt moved to include more cheese-like flavor. So not only did I increase the cottage cheese for the two batters (by 4 ounces for each batter), but I added some lemon juice as well (1 teaspoon for each batter) for some tartness. In light of this "liquid" increase, I also boosted the flour (from 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup for each batter). I did not increase the sugar, because I felt that the batters of the aforementioned cheesecakes were easily sweet enough. Another thing worth noting is that—thanks to my chocolate crust refinements—the crust, this time, was baked as well.

Three 16-ounce containers of cottage cheese were used in this entire recipe!
 
Use a tub when baking.

Chocolate Batter:
1/2 cup skim milk
2 tablespoons melted or softened butter
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
7/8 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups (20 oz.) lowfat cottage cheese, whipped (no-salt-added recommended)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs

Place this batter into a lightly buttered 9" cheesecake pan, and bake at 300 degrees (batter only, no crust), for about 100 minutes (or until cake tester comes out clean). Cool down, and remove from pan.

Chocolate Crust (bake this one together with the peanut butter batter, below):
4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted
1 1/3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup (8 oz.) lowfat cottage cheese, whipped (no-salt-added recommended)
3/8 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (next to last ingredient here)
2.2 oz. finely ground Bran Buds

Promptly pour/press this crust mixture into the bottom of a lightly buttered 9" cheesecake pan.

Peanut Butter Batter:
2 tablespoons melted or softened butter
3 oz. unsalted peanut butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup skim milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups (20 oz.) lowfat cottage cheese, whipped (no-salt-added recommended)
2 eggs

Add this batter on top of the chocolate crust in the pan, and bake at 300 degrees (batter only, no crust), for about 100 minutes (or until cake tester comes out clean). After removing the pan from the oven, very carefully transfer the cooled chocolate batter layer into the pan, on top of the peanut butter layer. Then cool down, and afterwards remove entire cheesecake from pan.
 
It's a frustratingly hard art to place a (cooled-off) whole batter layer on top of another one that is sitting in a hot pan! Somehow, I made out alright in my previous chocolate-peanut-butter prototype. But not this time! The chocolate batter layer broke on me during the insertion, and I had to make the best of re-assembling it inside the still-hot pan. So I got cheesecake cracked in about 5 places as a result (at least this hopefully would not affect the overall flavor, just the appearance).

So why not just bake both batters in the same pan at the same time? Because I had unfavorable experiences with this kind of arrangement back in the 1980's—from a couple of flavored batters combining to my dissatisfaction—to difficulties in getting the cheesecake to cook thoroughly.

I somehow felt that the peanut butter flavor was now too weak in comparison with the chocolate. I also felt that the chocolate flavor was somewhat "sickly sweet" (or too sweet). There was hopefully some tartness, at least in the peanut butter batter, but I wanted more—in both batters.

Despite my personal assessments, this cheesecake went over very well at Living Hope Church, and I got quite a few favorable comments.
 

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