Hannah's Polka Dot Cheesecake

Like quite a few people, i've discovered and become quite addicted to Pinterest. So after searching for cheesecake inspiration, there was plenty to choose from.

I chose a cheesecake that was vanilla but with chocolate 'polka dots' in it, with the idea that when you cut in to the cheesecake you would also see dots as well. However as i'm not really a fan of a buttery biscuit base (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfeyUGZt8nk), I chose to swap this for a chocolate brownie base instead.

Ingredients
Filling
16 oz softened cream cheese
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 oz dark chocolate, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup sour cream

Brownie Base
113g butter (room temperature)
113g dark chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 Eggs
1/4 milk
1 cup plain flour

Instructions
I started by pre-heating my fan oven to 155c and lightly greasing my 9 inch spring form cheesecake pan.
When measuring out my ingredients, I was excited to use my new scales, kindly bought for me for my bday by fellow tarts Felicity and Jess and as some of the measurements were in cups, I finally had an excuse to use my adorable duck measuring cups!

For the base I melted the butter and chocolate over a low heat until it was smooth, removed from the heat and then mixed in the sugar. After this mixture had cooled for about 5 minutes I added the eggs and milk and used my electric hand whisk to blend together (this needs to be done quickly to prevent the eggs from cooking and scrambling). Lastly I mixed in the flour, before spooning in to the cheesecake pan and baking for roughly 25 minutes.

For the filling I used by standalone mixer to beat the cream cheese until smooth and gradually added the sugar. I added the eggs one at a time on low speed, followed by the vanilla and sour cream.  I had to occasionally stop and scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure it was all mixing together. Out of this mixture I then took 1/2 cup of the cheesecake filling and set aside.

I melted the dark chocolate in a bain-marie and then stirred the chocolate into the filling I had set aside.

I poured the plain filling into the pan, smoothing out to the edges.  To make the dots, I filled a piping bag with the chocolate mixture and placed dots all over the cheesecake until the chocolate mixture was used up.
This was then placed in the oven and baked for 1 hour. When cooked, I turned off the oven and left the cheesecake in the oven for an additional 1 hr, which stops the top from cracking.  This was then meant to be put in the fridge for at least 24 hours, but that didn't happen, as it smelt so good and surely it doesn't need that long to cool?!

The end result was really delicious and although the dots weren't as circular as the ones I saw on Pinterest, it had the desired effect and looked quite pretty. If I was to make this again, I would use less of the brownie base as it did end up being quite thick.

Measuring cups

End Result