Cold stracciatella cheesecake is a delicious cookie base and a melt-in-your-mouth cold cheesecake with pieces of your favorite chocolate. This recipe is worth trying!
Ingredients for the cookie base
- 200 g digestive cookies (oatmeal, whole grain)
- 70 g finely grated chocolate, e.g. dessert chocolate
- 70 g of soft butter – or a little more
Ingredients for stracciatella cheese mass
- 1 kg of ground cottage cheese, e.g. thick cottage cheese from a bucket
- 100 g of grated dark chocolate
- 150 g of powdered sugar – about 3/4 cup
- 1.5 cups of whipping cream 30% – very chilled
- 30 g of food gelatin – about 3 tablespoons
- 100 ml of boiling water – to dissolve the gelatin
Ingredients for fruit jelly – can be omitted
- 300 g raspberries – or other fruit
- 1 jelly, e.g. raspberry flavor
- 400 ml of boiling water – to dissolve the jelly
Recipe for Cold stracciatella cheesecake
Step 1: Place the bottom in the pan
Prepare a cake tin with a diameter of 24 cm. Line the bottom and sides of the baking tin with baking paper or foil (grease the inside rims with a little butter so that the high strips of parchment paper stick well to the inside of the tin).
Place cookies (200 grams) in the food processor bowl. Blend them into sand. If you have a small chamber and low-power equipment, I recommend crushing several cookies at a time and placing the ground ones in a bowl. If you don’t have a food processor, you can place the cookies in a bowl and crush them using a wooden pestle with a round tip, or place them in a ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin. To the ground cookies, add 70 grams of finely grated chocolate (e.g. dessert chocolate) and 70 grams of very soft or melted and cooled butter. Mix everything very thoroughly.
Pour the cookie dough with chocolate into the form and pat it down, smoothing the surface. While preparing the cheese mass, you can put the form with the prepared base in the fridge or leave it on the kitchen counter.
Tip: For cheesecake, I recommend using good quality cereal cookies (preferably oatmeal, whole grain) of the Digestive type. If the mixture seems too loose, add a little more butter. You can safely use a 26-28 cm baking tin without changing the proportions of ingredients, because the bottom is high, as is the cheese mass.
Step 2: Dissolve the gelatin
If you have cooled the cream very well and are about to prepare the cheese mass, you can pour 30 grams of food-grade, all-purpose gelatin into a bowl of boiling water. No more than 100 ml of boiled water is enough to dissolve the gelatin. Stir everything until the gelatin is completely dissolved in the water. Set the bowl aside.
Step 3: Whip the cream with sugar
Add 150 grams of powdered sugar to 375 ml (1.5 cups) of very cool 30% whipping cream. Immediately start beating the cream and sugar with a mixer. Start with low speed so as not to splash the entire kitchen, and after a while increase the speed to maximum. Whip the cream until it starts to become stiff. This may take several minutes. Be careful not to over-whip it as the cream will start to bubble and separate into buttermilk and butter. How quickly you will achieve perfectly whipped cream depends on the fatness of the cream, its degree of cooling and the power of the mixer.
Tip: The cream should be ice cold. I recommend placing the container with the cream in the freezer compartment 30-60 minutes before mixing. The colder (even slightly frosted) the cream, the faster and better it will whip.
Step 4: Grate the chocolate
Grate 100 grams of chocolate (I use half and half dark 60% and milk) on a grater using large holes. Place a kilogram of ground cottage cheese in a large bowl (I do not recommend thin and sour cottage cheese from buckets). Add grated chocolate and stiffly whipped cream. Mix everything with a mixer at low speed until the ingredients combine into a uniform mass.
Step 5: Pour in the gelatin
While mixing the mixture very slowly, add a little bit of liquid gelatin (it may still be slightly warm). Pour in some gelatin, mix until combined and pour in another mini portion. After pouring all the gelatin, mix the contents of the bowl thoroughly using a spatula.
Step 6: Pour the mixture into the form
The stracciatella cheese mass hardens very quickly, so immediately transfer it to a form with a bottom. Level the surface of the cheesecake.
Tip: If you do not plan to add jelly and fruit, immediately place the mold in the refrigerator until the mixture has completely hardened. This may take from three to a maximum of five hours.
Step 7: Place the fruit
Place 300 grams of raspberries on the cheese mass. I gently embedded some raspberries in the mass for a decorative effect. You can also put other fruits: banana slices soaked in lemon juice, blueberries or blueberries, blackberries, strawberries or wild strawberries. Put the form in the fridge.
Step 8: Make and cool the jelly
Prepare the jelly. Pour boiling water over one raspberry jelly (strawberry, cherry, wild strawberry or forest fruit jelly will also be great). You need 400 ml of boiling water. Stir the jelly constantly until it dissolves completely gelatin. Set the ready jelly aside to cool (in hot weather, you can put it in the fridge once it has cooled down, but check its consistency often to make sure it doesn’t harden too much).
When it has the consistency of jelly, spread/pour it over the fruit in the cheesecake. Mine set a bit more, so I mixed it vigorously and then spread it with a spoon over the entire surface of the raspberry cheesecake.
Step 9: Cool and serve
Place the cake tin with the cold stracciatella cheesecake in the fridge until the mass and jelly have completely hardened. This should not take longer than four hours. We keep the cheesecake in the fridge. It will stay fresh and taste for at least four days.
Enjoy your meal.
