Nutella Cheesecake

Love from the first sight and until the last bite

Source: Cheesecake adapted from Baker Street, crust adapted from The Heritage Cook, sauce adapted from Martha Stewart

Taste: 6 (out of 5)
Difficulty: 3 (out of 5)

Ingredients:
For the crust (1125 cal):
- 1 cup ground hazelnuts (525 cal)
- 1/4 cup sugar (195 cal)
- 1/4 cup butter, melted (405 cal)
For the cream cheese layer (2330 cal):
- 12 oz / 350 g cottage cheese (305 cal)
- 1/4 cup sugar (195 cal)
- 3 eggs (210 cal)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (10 cal)
- 1 cup Nutella (1600 cal)
- 2 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 2 tsp boiling water
For the sauce (575 cal):
- 1/3 cup Nutella (535 cal)
- 1/3 cup milk (40 cal)
Total: 6 inch cake, 6 servings, 4030 cal, 670 cal/serving

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a 6-inch springform pan with parchment paper and butter the paper.
2. For the crust: In a food processor, pulse the hazelnuts with the sugar until finely ground. Add the butter; pulse until the mixture resembles moist sand. Press the crumbs into the bottom of the prepared springform pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
3. For the cheesecake layer: While the crust is baking, in a very powerful food processor beat the cottage cheese until completely smooth and fluffy. Add sugar and process until well combined. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. Lastly, add the Nutella and coffee mixture into cream cheese and beat to combine.
4. Prepare a bain-marie: When the crust finished baking, take it out of the oven (leave the oven on). Wrap the bottom and sides of the sprinform pan in one large sheet of aluminum foil. Place the 6 inch pan with the aluminum foil inside a larger non-springform cake pan. Fill the larger pan with about 1 inch of hot water. This is your bain-marie. Not too complicated, right?
5. Pour the batter over the crust and bake at 350F for about 1 hour. The center of the cheesecake should still be slightly jiggly.
6. Let the cake sit in the oven for one hour after it has been turned off.
7. Remove the cake from oven and cool completely before removing from the pan. Chill for 4 hours to overnight before serving.
8. For the sauce: In a small saucepan, combine 1/3 cup Nutella with 1/3 cup milk. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat and whisk until smooth.
9. Pour the warm sauce over the cake right before eating. Serve with whipped cream and savor every bite!

Afterthoughts:
- This is one of the best cakes I've tasted. It is perfect in every way: great texture, amazing combination of flavors and it's extremely satisfying. It is so rich, that half a serving is more than enough (even for me).
- I fell in love with this cake from the moment I saw the Nutella Espresso Cheesecake recipe on Baker Street. I barely have any time to bake these days, but I simply had to make this recipe.
There was another cheesecake recipe that I was hoping to make, the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake with Walnut Crust from The Heritage Cook. So I decided to combine these two recipes and make a nut crust for the Nutealla cheesecake. To be consistent with the Nutella theme, I used hazelnuts and not walnuts for the crust.
Another great idea that I got from The Heritage Cook was making a sauce to serve with the cheesecake. But I was missing some of the ingredients for The Heritage Cook's sauce. So I did a quick online search and found Martha Stewart's Chocolate Hazelnut sauce. It was meant for pancakes, but it worked really well on this cake too.
- Some notes about the cheesecake batter. I was going to use cottage cheese instead of cream cheese to make the cake lighter. To compensate for the lighter texture I was going to use a little flour in the batter. But then I read Baker Street's very convincing advice against using flour in cheesecakes. I was still very hesitant, but eventually decided to skip the flour. And given that the cake was perfect, it must have been the right decision.
Another point that made me worried was adding coffee. I had tried several other coffee / chocolate recipes before where the addition of coffee ruined the final product. So I made the batter without the coffee, took out a teaspoon of the batter, added a couple of coffee drops, tasted, liked and added the coffee.
My conclusion from the points above: you can safely trust anything from Baker Street :-).