Baked Chocolate Cheesecake—Prototype 10.1:
 
Prototype 10.1?? What's that??

The batter for this recipe is derived from a line of cheesecake prototypes that I made back around the late 1980's. The crust is derived, scaled down to a one-third recipe—with extremely small deviations on the cottage cheese and Bran Buds—from that used in Prototype 3 of the Chocolate Bran Buddy Bars.

More specifically, around 1987 or 1988, I began experimenting with a "Baked Cheese Pie" recipe in a cookbook from the American Heart Association. This initial recipe was not chocolate flavored, but supposedly meant to be plain, although it actually turned out too lemony. I referred to it as "Prototype 1". From there, I went through a number of different cheesecake prototypes, with a few different flavors, incrementing the "prototype" number as I went along. "Prototype 4" was my first chocolate attempt (it ended up having way too much cocoa powder). A number of prototypes later, I had a much improved chocolate cheesecake, "Prototype 10", and continued on with additional flavors. I hardly gave consideration to the crust, as I wanted to focus on the batter.

The recipe presented here uses this "Prototype 10" batter, but with a relatively minor swap. The original version used margarine. The updated version presented here uses butter instead. Since I am adding crust, I felt that I would also implement a minor variation for the prototype number. "10.1" is the result.

This one is a baked recipe (as opposed to "refrigerate until firm").
 
Crust:
2 oz. melted, semi-sweet chocolate
4 teaspoons skim milk, heated
4 teaspoons cocoa powder. Fully dissolve this in the chocolate and milk, then gradually blend in...
5 oz. whipped, lowfat cottage cheese. Then add...
3/8 cup granulated sugar. Blend thoroughly, then add...
1 teaspoon vanilla (next to last ingredient here). Blend this in, then finally mix in (quickly and vigorously, all at once)...
2.9 oz. finely ground Bran Buds

Press this crust mixture into the bottom of a lightly buttered 9" cheesecake pan (such as removable-bottom or spring-form). There is no need to press the crust up the pan's sidewall.

Batter:
2 cups lowfat cottage cheese
2 tablespoons melted or softened butter
2 eggs
7/8 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cocoa powder

Blend all these ingredients together thoroughly, particularly the butter and eggs (an electric mixer or food processor may be needed for this), then pour this batter into the pan (on top of the crust, of course). Promptly place this into the oven—preheated at 300 degrees—and bake for 100 minutes (or until cake tester comes out clean). Remove from oven, cool down to about room temperature, carefully remove from pan, and refrigerate (perhaps at least three hours is a good suggestion at this last step).

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