Black Forest Cheese Cake Dessert

The latest craze to hit the baking world seems to be the concept of desserts in jars - and I LOVE it! Its such a sweet idea! Any ways - I made my own version of the craze (as always) and I made some dessert in glasses!

If you saw this post last week, you will recognize some of these photos, because its the SAME process that I used to make my mini black forest cheese cakes! So here is the run down:

It all starts off with a biscuit base made from Tennis Biscuits and melted butter. Just a quick note on that: I used Tennis Biscuits because that is what us South African's use for that sort of thing :) but you can just use whatever you would normally use for a biscuit base!

And this biscuit base mixture get spooned into the bottom of a glass. Then these little fellas get put in the fridge while the cheesecake makin' begins :)

First up in the mix is some cottage cheese, condensed milk and lemon juice which gets mixed until it looks like this:

This mixture is really really really good! It is the very essence of cheese cake (ok so maybe I am being a little melodramatic - but it is very good!)

Then some whipping cream gets whipped up nice and stiff - and then the yummy, tangy lemony mixture gets folded into the cream. Finally - to help the cheese cake set nicely - some gelatine gets hydrated and folded in (for more on the gelatine bit - see this post)

Ok - so that is the basic cheese cake mixture which will form the  top layer of the dessert. At this point you will need to scoop some out and place it in another dish. Make sure its enough for the top layer in all the desserts depending on the size of the jars (or glasses) you are going to be using. Now it is time for the cherry and chocolate part! Oh yeah!

Dump some chopped dark chocolate and a jar of drained morello cherries into the remaining mixture and give it a good stir to distribute the "goods"evenly. Yes - you may lick the spoon after :)

Layering time!!! Grab the jars with the bases out of the fridge and spoon some of the black forest cheesecake mixture over it. Then spoon a layer of black cherry preserve over this and finally end it off with some of the plain cheese cake mixture. If you like - which I did - you can spoon some extra preserve over the top and plonk a fresh cherry on the very top. Sadly - you can't dig in just yet - these fellas need to refrigerate for at least 3 hours before you can enjoy them. In my opinion, they are way better the next day - the flavours just seem to 'deepen' overnight!

  And so there you have it!

Black Forest Cheesecake in Jars {printable}

 Biscuit Base:

1 packet tennis biscuits / graham crackers
125g melted butter

• Crush biscuits and mix with butter
• Press in a greased dish and refrigerate for about 30min

Cheesecake Filling

1 tub cottage cheese (250g)

500ml whipped cream (heavy cream)
125ml lemon juice
1 tin condensed milk
20ml gelatine powder
60ml water
100g chopped bittersweet chocolate
1 jar morello cherries
cherry topping / cherry preserves

• Mix the cottage cheese and condensed milk until smooth
• Slowly stir in lemon juice
• Fold this mixture into the whipped cream
• Hydrate the gelatine in the water and fold it into the cream mixture
• Spoon some of this plain mixture into a bowl to use later
• Fold in the chocolate and cherries into the remaining mixture
• Layer the black forest cheesecake mixture over the biscuit base 
• Spoon some cherry preserve over this
• Add the final layer of plain cheesecake
• Top the cheese cake with the cherry topping / preserves
• Decorate with fresh cherries (if you like)
• Refrigerate for at least 3 hours to set