Introducing the incredible ‘Emerald City’ mint chocolate cheesecake.

A picture tells a thousand words.

So let’s leave it to the pictures….

… EXCEPT to say that in typical foodie style, this cheesecake is the epitome of fancy, impressive food being SUPER easy to make. You CANNOT get this recipe wrong, you cannot stuff it up, it just involves whipping some stuff up and folding it together.

PROMISE!

AND, in terms of decoration, your imagination is your only limitation. You can either go with a UNIFORM pattern eg Mint Slices spaced evenly around the edges and crumbled chocolate bars in the middle kinda thing, or a RANDOM ‘pattern’ eg stuff all over the place! If you go in the random direction, you can still have a bit of a ‘plan of attack’, and in my case, it was higher at the back and lower towards the front…

Also, all of the crumbs and small itty bitty left over bits of chopped up biscuit, chocolate bars etc need not go to waste…. or in to your mouth whilst you are cooking. I used it to make a ‘collar’ of minty goodness around the base of the cheesecake when it was on the stand. It finished it off perfectly.

ENJOY!

Ingredients:

Using a 25cm tin (with tall sides, approx 12cm – and filling it to the top!)

For the base:

100 g Arnott’s Mint Slice biscuits

400g Arnott’s Choc Ripple biscuits

200g butter, melted

For the filling:

5 x 225g packets Cream Cheese – Room Temperature

1 and 1/4 cups caster sugar

5 cups whipped cream

3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

1 teaspoon green food dye (you can vary this amount depending on how green you want it to be!)

1 block (118g) Nestle Aero Mint Chocolate – roughly chopped

For the Topping and Decoration

200g Dark Chocolate Melts

100ml Thickened cream

As many Mint Slices, Peppermint Crisp Chocolate Bars, Aero Mint Chocolate Bars as you want. I used approx 3 Cadbury Flakes, 12 Mint Slices, 5 Peppermint Crisps and 3 Blocks Aero Mint!

Like Debrief Daily on Facebook. 

Method:

NOTE: Make sure the cream cheese is at room temp and that your cream (for the filling) is already whipped and set aside.

1. Blitz the Choc Ripple and Mint Slice biscuits in a food processor to a fine crumb. Combine with the melted butter in a bowl and mix. Transfer to a baking paper lined tin (I also grease the edges up with melted butter to ensure it doesn’t stick!) and using hands push evenly into the base and up the sides of the tin. Place in the fridge to set.
2. Place room temp cream cheese and sugar in an electric mixer and beat on slow for 2 mins, increase speed to medium for a further 5 minutes and then mix on high for a further five minutes. You want to keep going until there are NO lumps and the mix is light and airy.
3. Turn mixer off and add in food dye and peppermint extract and then turn back on and mix again on medium until well combined.
4. Turn mixer off and very gently fold through the chopped Aero and whipped cream. It is important that you are gentle when doing this part but it is also important that the mixture is well-combined, so take your time!
5. Pour filling into base and smooth top with a spatula. Set in fridge. This should set properly within 3 hours but I prefer to make it the day before I am serving and then to finish the topping the next day.
6. To make the chocolate ganache topping place the chocolate and the cream in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for about 30 seconds at 10 second intervals, stirring in between. When fully melted, set aside for a few minutes to cool slightly.
7. Remove cheesecake from fridge and slowly pour the ganache over the top of it. You can use as much or as little of this as you like (the remainder can be stored in the fridge for about 5 days and used as fudge sauce) but try to make sure it doesn’t spill over the edges too much!
8. Allow the ganache topping to set slightly (should take about 5 minutes) before generously decorating the top in an array of Arnott’s Mint Slice biscuits, Cadbury Flakes, Nestle Peppermint Crisp Bars and Nestle Aero Bubbly!

ENJOY!

This post originally appeared on Phoodie. You can follow Phoodie on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.