by award-winning food blogger Jane Cessford (aka The Fat Foodie)

 

I have quite a generous-sized kitchen herb garden, but every year the mint takes over and I have to prune quite a bit of it back. I hate throwing it away, so I make peppermint tea quite frequently with it, but it’s nice to feature it in a dessert once in a while to truly pay homage to it. That’s why I created this peppermint chocolate cheesecake. 

Chocolate and mint were born to go together. They’re a flavour combination that just work well, much like chocolate and orange. I created this peppermint chocolate cheesecake one afternoon when I couldn’t bear to throw away a batch of beautifully fragrant fresh peppermint leaves (and I’d already drank my own weight in peppermint tea), so I decided that a tasty dessert was in order.

 

It’s really easy to make this peppermint chocolate cheesecake because all you do is mix the crushed biscuits with butter to make the base and then blend the warmed cheesecake ingredients together to create a smooth, mint-infused filling to pour on top. I used my Nutribullet to meld the filling ingredients together, but if you don’t want to use fresh mint you can just add a teaspoon of mint extract into the filling mixture and it’ll taste just as good.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out why this peppermint chocolate cheesecake tastes so good and I’ve just realised that it’s because it tastes like an After Eight made love to a cheesecake and they gave birth to this dessert. It’s rich, but light, it’s chocolatey, but has the fresh mouth-tingling zing you’d expect from fresh mint leaves, and it’s extremely decadent. After you’ve tasted this, it’s easy to understand why the After Eight and cheesecake were born to fall in love with each other.

 

Ingredients for the cheesecake base:

200g gluten-free digestive biscuits

120g butter (or non-dairy version) melted

Ingredients for the cheesecake:

200g dark chocolate

160ml tinned coconut milk solids (the solid part of a tin of coconut milk)

100g lactose-free cream cheese (or a non-dairy version)

1 tsp of mint extract or 20g fresh mint leaves

Some fresh mint leaves (for decoration – optional)

Method:

Refrigerate a tin of coconut milk until it is cold.

Line a 9 inch cake tin with greaseproof paper. (Or make life simple for yourself and do as I do and use these pre-prepared cake tin liners. They’re so convenient!)

Either by hand or by using a food processor, make the biscuit base by crushing the digestives and mixing it with the melted butter. Pour the mix into the cake tin and press down. Refrigerate until firm.

In the meantime make the cheesecake by breaking up your chocolate and melting it in the microwave, stirring it really regularly so that it doesn’t burn. Once it’s melted set the bowl to one side.

Take the solid coconut cream out of the cold tin and put it into a microwavable jug along with the cream cheese. Heat it in the microwave until it’s hot to the touch.

Slowly and gently stir the coconut milk cream into the melted chocolate until it’s all combined together.

If you’re using mint extract stir it in now, but if you’re using fresh mint then blend it into the chocolate mixture using a food processor or blender.

Pour it on top of the biscuit base, top with the fresh mint leaves and leave it in the fridge to set until firm. Serve.

Find Jane’s rather fabulous & succcesful new recipe book on Amazon.
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