Battle of the Cheesecakes

From Hadi's Birthday Dinner:

I actually wanted to make something else other than something with chocolate in it :P I offered all sorts of cakes, cheesecakes, but Hadi insisted on having the Deep Chocolate Cheesecake. It did look good in the book but... chocolate??? Oh well. I had some good quality dark chocolate on hand, so I thought I might as well. It is his birthday cake after all, hehe. So... here we go!

What you need:
For the base:
4 tablespoons butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
115g digestive biscuits, finely crushed
1 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder

For the chocolate layer:
800g mascarpone cheese
200g icing sugar, sifted
175g dark chocolate, melted

To decorate:
75g dark chocolate, melted

What you do:

1. Grease a 20-cm/8-inch loose-bottomed cake tin.
2. To make the base, put the crushed biscuits, cocoa powder and melted butter into a large bowl and mix well. Press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base of the prepared tin.
3. Put the mascarpone and sugar into a bowl. Add the dark chocolate and mix together until thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture evenly over the biscuit layer. Cover with clingfilm and chill for at least 4 hours.
4. Use the melted chocolate to make decorations. The book suggested making chocolate leaves, but I couldn't find any suitable ones. What I did was place the melted chocolate in a small plastic bag, snip a tiny hole in one of the corners and drizzle random patterns over non-stick baking paper. Once set, peel the decorations of the paper and decorate the cake. Serve immediately.

Once I saw the finished product, my first thought was, "I have outdone myself!" Ahahahaha, yes, I am very modest. The cake looked very plain in the beginning, but the simple chocolate decorations made it look quite fancy! Here's a closeup, ahahahaha.

Unfortunately, I forgot to buy the icing sugar for this. I had to substitute with caster sugar instead, which is still relatively fine-grained, but may have affected the texture a bit. The recipe also wanted the juice of 1/2 an orange as well as rind of 1 orange to be mixed into the chocolate mixture, but several people (including myself) don't like the idea of an orange-flavoured chocolate cheesecake, so I skipped that out. I also used chocolate-covered digestives for the biscuit base, hehe. I couldn't find plain digestives, and also, Hadi insisted. :P

Also, I think the cheese may have been a bit too cold when I added in the melted chocolate, as dark brown chocolate specks were formed in the cake. Doesn't affect the taste at all, but made the cake look a bit freckly, ahahaha. I would suggest warming the cheese up a little, or at least not using it straight from the fridge.

I had a lot of "volunteers" when I made the cake, hehe. Some people offered to mix the sugar and cheese, while others offered to crush the biscuits. The rest offered moral support. And of course, all my helpers were more than happy to "help" me taste the cheesecake, since I am not really that big a fan of cheesecake and haven't eaten a lot to be able to compare. Or so they said.

When the guests turned up with another chocolate cheesecake, well, what can I say. Everyone was ecstatic, ahahaha. Means they can get bigger portions, ahahaha. There was no shortage of volunteers to judge which cheesecake was better, ahahaha. Hadi pronounced mine the winner, just because it had his name on it, but his friend retaliated by drizzling Hadi's name on his cake with melted chocolate, ahahaha. It resulted in an artsy-looking Hadi, he says, hehe. You can just see it if you squint your eyes. :P So anyway, who was the winner? Well, here's the breakdown. :)

Ihsan's cheesecake:
This was a no-bake cheesecake, which uses mascarpone cheese instead of the more usual cream cheese. Mascarpone is a very creamy cheese which is much milder than cream cheese, tastes almost like thick milk - or cream, ahahaha. Because of this, the chocolate flavour was not overwhelmed at all, and the cake tastes almost like a chocolate mousse - very thick, very creamy and oh-so-chocolatey. On a side note, the chocolate decorations tasted really good. ;)

TH's cheesecake:

This cheesecake was baked and I think used cream cheese as well. Because of this, it tasted more like what I would expect a cheesecake to taste like. There was a subtle chocolate flavour, but the main thing was definitely the cheese - a big plus for all cheesecake fans. ahahaha. He also provided a warm chocolate sauce to go with the cheesecake, which was nice - really added to the chocolate flavour, a big plus. I liked his biscuit base - it was thinner, firmer and tasted better than mine, hehe. His cake's texture was also much better than mine - very very very smooth. Very nice! :D

So which cake was better? Well, there were some on favour each side, hehe. Those who preferred my cake "whispered" to me that they liked my cake better, and I assume that they did the same for the other cake, hehe. The two cakes are definitely very different from each other - one is chocolatey, while the other is cheesy. Just depends on which flavour you like better. :) I am biased, of course, and I like my cake better, but that's just me. :D