Learn how to make a Top Hat and Tails cheesecake from Jim Pettinger (formerly know as Biker Jim) of Bikers and Bakers It's a white chocolate cheesecake with a brownie top and a brownie bottom.
Top Hat and Tails Cheesecake
Top Hat and Tails Cheesecake
Chef Jim Pittenger
Total time: 2.5 hours
This is a fresh take on a fun dessert. Cheesecake is good, yeah? Brownies…also good.
Put em together with a white chocolate filling and you are completing an infinity dessert circle you never knew existed.
What are some tips for making cheesecakes?
Cheesecakes are easy! Remember that. Start with your pan.
Use a 9” springform pan and line with parchment paper. Put a sheet on the bottom and close the pan over it. Then use a long enough sheet to wrap all around the inside of the pan and cut it to fit the height of the pan. Using a tablespoon of butter or shortening grease the inside of the pan and stick the parchment to that.
This little trick is gonna make removing the pan so easy later, so do it.
Ingredients List
24 oz cream cheese at room temperature
4 whole eggs plus 1 yolk also at room temperature
1/4 cup corn starch
2/3 cup sugar
8 oz white chocolate melted and cooled
1 tbs vanilla extract
For the Brownies:
8 oz good chocolate semi-sweet, bittersweet, milk…whatever you like
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
2 eggs at room temperature
4 tbs unsalted butter room temperature
1/4 cup chocolate syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
Chef Jim Pittenger of Bikers and Bakers cutting a Top Hat and Tails cheesecake.
How to make this cheesecake
Step 1
Preheat your oven to 350. Do the brownie first. In a medium bowl mix your sugar, flour and salt together and set aside.
Step 2
In a small sauce pan on your stove melt the chocolate on low heat. You can use a double boiler, but if you pay attention you don’t really need to. Once the chocolate is melted add your butter and stir. Turn off the heat.
Step 3
In a small bowl mix your eggs then temper them slightly by adding a few tbs of the melted chocolate and butter. Stir that up. This will keep your eggs from curdling when you toss em into the warm chocolate. Stir your eggs to the pan with the chocolate and butter. Then stir in the chocolate syrup and vanilla.
Step 4
Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour and sugar and stir. You don’t need to over mix. Put 1/2 the batter into the bottom of the springform pan and pitch that into the over for about 12 minutes. Take the other 1/2 of the batter and on a sheet of parchment paper spread out a circle just slightly smaller than the springform pan. Put another sheet of parchment on top and put that in the freezer.
Step 5
Take the pan out of the over and let the brownie bottom cool on a rack. Okay, in a large mixing bowl, stand mixers are really handy here, plop in your cream cheese, add the sugar and corn starch and blend until smooth. That’s why you use room temp cream cheese. It blends quickly. Cold stuff? Not so much. Add your eggs one at a time and keep blending. Scrape the sides down with a spatula every so often.
Step 6
To melt the white chocolate, break it into smallish chunks and put it in a bowl, and use your microwave for 15 seconds. Then stir, then another 20 seconds and stir. By the third time it should be melted. You can also put it in a pan and melt on your range at low heat, but why dirty a pan when you probably have a microwave. Let it cool a little. Stir in your whipping cream at low speed then add your chocolate. Toss the vanilla in there and your batter is ready.
Step 7
Pour the batter on top of the brownie bottom. Then pull the frozen disk of brownie batter out of the freezer, peel the parchment paper off and carefully put it on top of the cheesecake batter. Just rest it there.
Step 8
Plop the pan into your 350 oven and set a timer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn the oven down to 225 and set a timer for 80 minutes.
Step 9
After 80 minutes turn off the oven and let the cheesecake set in the oven for another 30 minutes. Pull it out and cool on a rack. Once the cake is cool, I usually freeze my cheesecakes at that point. Makes them way easier to cut cleanly.