Recipe - No Bake Creme Egg Cheesecake

I've had a lovely Saturday :-)  Mr G announced that he is cooking dinner for me tomorrow as it's Mothering Sunday (in the UK) and I had to pick what roast I wanted.  I know!  He cooks once a quarter and it's always pie, but no, to his credit, tomorrow I am getting a Sunday dinner, which is going to be lovely.  I very rarely eat a Sunday dinner, because once I've cooked it for six of us, the last thing I want to do is eat it.  I plumped for Roast Beef in the end, so he bought a lovely piece of beef.  I'm going to slow cook it overnight, because it's my favourite way of cooking beef, it's so tender and melt in the mouth.  The cooking liquid also makes the most wonderful gravy, the best I've tasted.

After my 6.5lb weight loss this week, I finally got into a pair of jeans a size smaller (yay me!) and then we all went to my niece Ruby's 5th Birthday party, where I sampled a cake.  Just one.  I had a few comments from people who hadn't seen me in a while about how much weight I'd lost, which was nice.  And for once I accepted the compliments.  Why not?  I have done well and I'm far too hard on myself.  Mr G is in agony and is totalled on the sofa, so I'm trying to sneakily do as much as possible towards tomorrow's dinner so if necessary all he has to do is boil the veg and dish it up.  I've peeled all the vegetables and set them in pans, I'll chuck the beef (which is so big I'll have to halve it) in the slow cookers before bed.  Yes, I am a control freak, at least in the kitchen (mine!).  He asked me what I wanted him to make for dessert.  Mr G, making dessert.  Erm... The look of abject horror I must have displayed at that question, because when I suggested that if he was doing the dinner, the least I could do is the pudding, he didn't object ;-)

You'd need to have been living on the moon (or at least absent from Social Media) to have missed Iced Jem's Creme Egg Cheesecake.  It's been shared on Facebook, pinned on Pinterest, and I think she sent it in an email (if you subscribe to her, if not, do it!  She's amazing!)   I love Iced Jem, she is a real gem, pardon the pun, and a lovely girl to interact with too.  This is where her original recipe lies.  Want to see how I got on?  Of course you do!  It's a cheesecake with Creme Eggs in, two of the most amazing things in the world.  Combined.  No brainer.

* I used three bags of mini Creme Eggs for this, because the bags I bought only seemed to contain 7 or 8 in each and the pictures on Iced Jems looked like an awful lot more than 2 packs.  I suppose it depends what sized bags you can get hold of.  11 went into the mixture and 13 on top.
* I also put the Creme Eggs into the freezer for about 30 minutes prior to starting, as they're not the easiest things in the world to halve at room temperature!
* I used 600g of Philly as opposed to 700g (it was all I had...) and therefore upped the double cream from 100ml to 200ml.
* I used 100g of melted butter as opposed to 125g.

First I lined a springform cake tin, I would say it was an 8 or 9 incher, with kitchen foil.  I did it in a cross so I could lift the edges and lift it out of the tin with enough support.

Next, I blitzed 300g chocolate digestives into crumbs, and mixed them with 100g of melted butter.  Pressed into the bottom of the tin, and put the tin in the fridge for about 20 minutes while I made the filling.

 
I whisked the 200ml of double cream in a jug, and in a separate bowl, I put in the 600g cream cheese, 200ml of soured cream, 200g of icing sugar and beat with an electric mixer until smooth.  Then I folded in the cream.

I took the mini Creme Eggs out of the freezer and halved them, some length ways, some width ways.  Zero mess, and no leakage this way!  Frozen Creme Eggs - the future.

I added the Creme Eggs to the cheesecake filling, and stirred well before spooning it over the cheesecake base, making sure the Creme Eggs were mainly in my slice evenly dispersed.  Then it went back into the fridge for another 20 minutes.

I melted 200g of milk chocolate, and allowed it to cool slightly.  I then spooned it over the top of the cheesecake to create a thin chocolate topping.  Before the chocolate hardened completely, I pressed the remaining Creme Eggs into it, before returning it to the fridge.

As you can clearly see from the main photo - it didn't make Mother's Day unscathed... but we had to try it, you understand that?  And it was only one piece between four of us...?  And it was absolutely lush, I can't wait for a huge slice of that after my Sunday lunch tomorrow ;-)

And on that note, I am off to bed before I drop

M x

*Edit - after serving the cheesecake to everyone, I did find that the chocolate had set hard and made it quite hard to slice cleanly.  There's nothing worse than a dessert that looks a mess.  So the next time I make it, I will probably use a ganache topping, as opposed to melted chocolate :-)