Hi all,
I decided to make the Chocolate Honeycomb Cheesecake from What's For Dessert? on New Year's Eve. Here are my thoughts -
Firstly the recipe doesn't list what ingredients you need for the base or how to make the base, however from another thread it was determined that you are meant to use the Basic All Purpose Biscuit Base from the front of the book (thanks to the poster who helped me find this)! The cheesecake recipe just says to use a flan tin but the base recipe says to use a 23cm minimum flan tin so this is what I went with.
I found my mixture was nowhere near enough combined after beating the sugar, vanilla and cream cheese so I ended up doing it again twice more and then mixing a bit by hand with a soft spatula. My cream cheese was still a bit hard though so I would advise having it at room temperature before you start if possible.
My next problem came with the size of the tin. My base had filled out to cover the bottom of the flan tin nicely but when it came to the filling there was way too much. I poured as much as I could into the tin but had to stop when it was going to overflow. I ended up with around 600ml of leftover filling that just wouldn't fit. I don't know if you can freeze it but I have anyway, in the hope of having a go at making another one rather than letting it go to waste. I would definitely advise using a bigger tin, perhaps even a 20cm springform tin so that there is enough room for all of the filling.
With regards to cooking, I had my oven on 180 degrees (rather than 200) and an hour was still too long for my cheesecake. It came out slightly burnt on the top so I would advise keeping a close eye on it, perhaps 45 mins would have been enough seeing as I had less filling in it?
Finally, when decorating I also found that the melted chocolate didn't really glue the crunchie pieces on top of the cheesecake. It did stick some of them on but some still fell off. Perhaps I needed more melted chocolate but the recipe didn't specify how much you should use so I just used what was leftover from the actual filling.
Having said all that, it actually tasted quite nice although it was very rich and you definitely only need a small piece. It did taste nicer the next day after having a full night to set in the fridge. I would be prepared to give it another go but would maybe try it in a springform tin next time and see if I have better luck with that.