Chocolate and orange cheesecake

Do you remember this picture? The one with three snowmen standing on a cake and one abused teddy in the background.

It was from my late new years post here, and from that post I promised to dedicate a whole post to this little sweet beauty: the Chocolate And Orange Cheesecake, which deserves to be written with capital letters - CAOC. As mentioned, I did not get many photos, nevermind ones without a teddy bear lying in the background; everyone was too eager for the cake than for beautiful photographs of the cake.

As for the decoration, I had piped trees using melted dark chocolate on parchment paper. Seeing as I could only decorate the CAOC when I got there, some of the fragile trees had snapped, boohoo :( Oh well, I guess the three snowmen had made up for it and it is the taste of it that matters :P

This cheesecake was creamy. It was the cheesecake. I was especially proud of this as no bashing of the biscuits was involved - yes, I made the cheesecake base. Oh and did I mention, it also rose to the occasion and slipped right out of the tin neatly, woooo. 

Orange and Chocolate Cheesecake
Ingredients:

Base:
225g chilled, unsalted butter
250g plain flour, sifted
150g light muscovado sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder

Topping:
2 oranges
800g cream cheese
250g mascarpone cheese
4 large eggs
225g golden caster sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 vanilla pod

Decoration:
Dark chocolate

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180C/160 fan/gas mark 4. Grease a 9 inch springform cake tin, line with baking parchment
2. Cut 175g butter into cubes, melt remaining and set aside. Whiz flour, cubed butter, cocoa and sugar in food processor until texture of bread crumbs. (or rub butter into flour, stir in cocoa and sugar) Pour in melted butter and pulse/stir.
3. Tip mixture into tin, press down. Bake for 35-40 mins until lightly puffed. Remove and cool, lower oven setting to 150C/130 fan/gas mark 2
4. To make topping, grate zest from oranges, squeeze 150ml of the juice. Beat together the cream cheese, mascarpone, eggs, sugar, cornflour, zest and vanilla extract in a large bowl.
5. Split vanilla pod and scrape seeds out, add to cheese mixture. Beat in orange juice until smooth.
6. Pour topping over base and bake for 1 1/2 hours until pale golden, slightly risen, just set around edge but middle should still be slightly wobbly.
7. Turn off oven and leave cheesecake inside with door ajar to cool for 1 hour. Remove and cool completely for 3 hours then chill.
8. For the decoration, melt some dark chocolate and pipe tree shapes onto parchment paper. When set, peel off.
9. Remove tin and place cheesecake on serving plate. Stick on the choc trees using melted chocolate.