Chocolate Fudge Swirl Cheesecake Bars with Raspberries
In terms of cheesecake, I usually prefer an airy soufflé-type to a rich dense one. This one was more like the latter, but served as bars, which means each in a small portion, it was fine. Back to the beginning. I wanted to make some kind of sweets with a block of cream cheese, the leftover chocolate fudge and graham crackers. It wasn't a long way to reach this cheesecake bars. The recipe was my made-up. For the bottom crust, I remember that Cook's Illustrated mixes graham crackers and flour to create soggy-proof graham cracker crust for their NY cheesecake. So I did to make such crust, adjusting the amount of ingredients to fill 8 x 8 inch pan. Yes, I pre-baked it.
The filling was really made up. I mixed a box of cream cheese, about 1/4 cup of coconut sugar, 2 eggs, good squeezed lemon juice, vanilla, 2-3 tablespoons of milk and 2-3 tablespoons of Kefir cheese.
Let's make chocolate swirl! I was going to use up all leftover fudge, but even after using about half, I couldn't find space to swirl and had to stop. Otherwise, the cheesecake would have turned to fudge brownie.
I was almost about putting the pan into the oven. The chocolate swirl may make the cheesecake too sweet, or the cheesecake would be dense and probably heavy, I thought. A kind of bright fruity flavor might ease the sugary fudge sweetness and the cheesecake weight, not physically but mentally. I had frozen raspberries. I crumbled them and spread some over the top and push some into the cheesecake.
