About Me

I live in a small poke town within an hour of the California coast where there are more vineyards than people with my husband and three children and various pets. James Dean's tree is within walking distance and the James Brothers were also known to ride these hills. I was born to the son of Lutheran missionaries and the daughter of Catholic hypocrites. I'm a Zionist. I was born and raised in California where liberal ideas become gods, and conservative ideals are evil. Unfortunately, it's illegal to have morals in California. I'm one of the evil ones. I take my frustrations out on my houseplants, all 300+ of them.

Recipes & Procedures


Chocolate Yogurt Cheesecake

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This was an experiment. I was looking for a recipe that called for chocolate syrup in the cheesecake, instead of cocoa. I didn't find one, but did find a recipe which added cocoa and sugar to a graham cracker crumb crust. I didn't have enough graham crackers so I improvised. I added some of my daughter's ginger bread house ;)


Chocolate Yogurt Cheesecake

Ingredients:

Crust:
1-1/2 package cinnamon graham crackers
1/2 cup crushed ginger bread cookies
2 T sugar
2 heaping T cocoa powder
2 T margarine


Cheesecake:
2 8 oz packages cream cheese
1-1/2 cup homemade yogurt cheese, (1 quart of yogurt drained over night)
1/2 cup plain homemade yogurt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup chocolate syrup
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract


Topping (optional):
1/2 cup yogurt
1/8 cup chocolate syrup
1 can cherry pie filling


Crust:
  1. mix cookies and graham crackers in food processor, pulse until fine.
  2. Mix in margarine, cocoa, and sugar
  3. pulse until mixed well
  4. press into the bottom of a 10 in spring form pan
  5. bake at 350* for 8 minutes.
  6. cool on wire rack

Cheesecake:

  1. put chocolate syrup, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and yogurt in food processor and pulse until mixed.
  2. add cream cheese, 4 oz at a time, pulse between additions
  3. add yogurt cheese and pulse lightly
  4. pour over crust
  5. Drizzle syrup over top and marble it in
  6. bake at 325* until set about 45 minutes

Topping:

  1. mix chocolate syrup and yogurt until well blended then pour over cheesecake
  2. cool cheesecake at least 3 hours
  3. run knife along edge of cake then loosen spring form
  4. Serve with cherry pie filling and whipped cream on top

It turned out really good, I was surprised and it was photogenic also.

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yum!