New Years Eve dessert

Last night we had a nice new years eve party with a lot of good friends from the past and present. As expected, I was assigned (well... I guess I kind of assigned it to myself) to dessert duty. Needed to do something good for 14 people, and since I didn't have a lot of time, it should preferrably be something not too complicated.

I decided to go for a "Gateu au chocolat with ricotta cheesecake swirls", something I had made before this past fall, which had received lots of praise from the people eating it. This is a creation that I made from combining two different recipes. I got the idea from a post by Fanny at foodbeam (a great baking blog, I can highly recommend it) where she creates a brownie with swirls of the ricotta cheesecake. I found this interesting, but wanted something a bit different for the chocolate part, so instead of making the brownies, I made a chocolate cake that I found in a forum post at Bröllopstorget, a Swedish wedding planning web site (can't really remember why I found it, might have been while planning the wedding cake I made last summer). For simplicity (and since one recipe is in Swedish) I will still include the total recipe here (and this also include some minor modifications (I like to think of them as improvements) to the chocolate cake recipe.

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You will need:
For the chocolate cake:
200g dark chocolate (use good chocolate), finely chopped
200g butter
175g sugar
4 tbsp plain flour
4 eggs, separated
75ml double cream (the original recipe called for milk here, so that can also be used, but I've found the result better with cream)

For the ricotta cheese cake:
125g ricotta
80g cream cheese
30g sugar
seeds from one vanilla bean
1 egg, at room temperature
25ml double cream
1tbsp plain flour

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Preheat the oven to 180C.

First make the chocolate batter:
1. Bring the cream to a boil and melt the chocolate in the cream.
2. Add the butter and mix well until the butter is melted and incorporated in the mixture smoothly.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk 125g of the sugar with the egg yolks.
4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture a little at a time.
5. Add the flour and mix well.
6. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until opaque. Add the remaining 50g of sugar and whip until the egg whites hold firm peaks.
7. Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture.

Make the ricotta cheesecake batter by mixing all the ingredients together until smooth.

Pour the chocolate batter into a greased cake pan. Pipe the cheesecake into the uncooked chocolate cake batter or spoon it on top of the chocolate cake and make swirls in it by dragging the back of a wooden spoon through it a few times (take care not to overdo it - you don't want the batters to mix into one batter, but you want the chocolate cake and cheese cake to be distinct entities).

Bake on a wire rack in the oven for 30-34 minutes (this is the time stated on the original chocolate cake recipe, but I've found 35-40 minutes to be more appropriate, but to be safe, start with 30 minutes and go from there, frequently checking the cake).

Let the cake cool before serving.

Call your friends and ask them to come over for some cake, and watch their faces as they take the first bite. This cake has a very nice "melt in your mouth" property that make it quite delicious.

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Enjoy!)

(Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of this cake, but it's merits are in the taste department rather than the looks department anyway)