Follow Anna Olson's New York cheesecake recipe with the following changes: use no lemon juice, nor sour cream in this cheesecake batter. The cherries are tart, the chocolate is bitter-sweet, lemon juice would make the cheesecake far too tart. The moisture and creaminess of the melted chocolates and pureed cherries take the place of sour cream. This makes a very rich cheesecake. Reduce or omit some of the chocolates or cherries to make it milder.

Ingredients:

Three 8-oz blocks room temp Cream Cheese
3 room temp Eggs
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder (can use dark cocoa)
1/3 cup Cornstarch
1 cup Powdered Sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 tablespoon Vanilla Extract
1 teapoon Almond Extract
16 ounces dried Montmorency Tart Cherries
1/3 to 1/2 cup Maraschino Cherries
1/3 cup Maraschino Cherry Juice from jar
10 to 14 oz Dark Chocolate Chips
1 bar 92% Cacao Chocolate Bar broken up.
3 tablespoons Coconut Oil
2 tablespoons soft Dairy Butter
1/2 cup Powdered Sugar

Cherries: In a small pot, just cover the dried cherries with water and cherry juice, add a pinch of salt, stir. Boil this for 10 to 15 minutes, take off heat and cover to allow dried cherries to absorb the liquids, and to cool. When cherries are rehydrated and cooled, puree with about 1/4 to 1/2 cup maraschino cherries and 1/4 cup juice from jar. Add more maraschino juice if needed to help puree the cherries. The consistency should be like pancake batter, not soupy or thick.

Chocolates: Chocolate chips and broken chocolate bar are melted together in a low temp double boiler. Stir gently until melted and very smooth. Allow to cool a few minutes before adding to cheesecake batter later.

Ganache: Reserve about 1/2 cup each of melted chocolate and pureed cherries. Blend the reserved melted chocolate and reserved pureed cherries with 3 tablespoons coconut oil, 2 tablespoons soft dairy butter, dash salt, and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Mix very well by hand until well combined and smooth. This is the cherry-chocolate ganache to top the cheesecake after it has chilled. The ganache may need to be gently reheated before pouring over the baked, cooled cheesecake. If it is still too tart, well blend in a bit more powdered sugar until it's sweet enough to suit you, (what tastes just fine to one person won't please a different person).

Crust: Crush a sleeve of graham crackers (about 1 cup+) with 1/4 cup cane sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa powder. Once well pulverized, pour in a half a stick melted dairy butter, mix well until it looks like wet sand, set aside.

Line a deep baking pan, or spring form pan, butter the insides well. Press in crushed chocolate graham crackers in the bottom of the pan, and halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake crust at 350°f for 8 to 10 minutes. Allow to cool before pouring in cheesecake batter.

Reduce oven temperature to 250°f.

Batter: Blend room temperature cream cheese with sugars, cornstarch, cherry juice, salt, extracts. Blend until smooth, scrape down sides and bottom of bowl frequently and mix again. Add in the cooled, melted chocolate, cherry puree and blend well until very smooth, scrape down sides and bottom of bowl frequently and mix until smooth. If it looks too thick, add a little maraschino cherry juice and blend until well mixed. Now is the time to taste to see if it needs more sweetness or salt to suit your tastes. Mine was fine and needed nothing more, but you may want yours sweeter than I did mine. Do this now before adding the eggs.

Add the eggs and hand mix into the cheesecake batter, scraping the bowl. Do not mix lots, only until well combined. Don't whip or beat the eggs, mix gently until the eggs are well incorporated through the batter.

Pour very hot (boiled) water inside a larger pan, this is the water bath needed to cook the cheesecake evenly without cracking the top. The cheesecake pan will sit inside this larger pan with hot water. I use round pans for both the cheesecake and water bath, it seems to cook more evenly than differently shaped pans. The hot water should come halfway up the sides of the cheesecake pan.

Very slowly pour cheesecake batter over cracker crust. Shake pan gently to settle out bubbles in the batter. Pouring the batter slowly reduces the amount of bubbles forming when poured into the pan. Carefully place this pan inside the one filled partway with hot water.

Bake at 250°f for one hour. After an hour, gently jiggle the cake. If the batter slightly wiggles in the middle, it's just right. If it's got a lot more loose, shimmy and movement in the middle, it needs to bake longer (15 to 20 minutes or more, as humidity affects baking times, as does altitude). Then do the jiggle test again. If it jiggles slightly, turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to cool completely and undisturbed in the oven, leave it sitting in the water bath during it's cool down. After 2 hours, slightly crack open the oven door to allow the cake to come to room temperature in the cooling oven. The low temp baking, as well as the very slow cool down in the oven helps prevent a crack forming across the top of the cheesecake, and finishes cooking it. Don't remove the cheesecake pan from the water bath pan until the cake is close to room temperature.

Once the cheesecake is at room temp, place a cake lid over it and chill overnight in the fridge.

Warm the chocolate-cherry ganache mixture in a low temp double boiler, stirring well. Once the ganache is warm (not hot) and smooth, very carefully de-pan the cold cheesecake and place it on a cake pedestal. In the center-top of the cheesecake, slowly pour on the warm ganache. Spread the ganache to the edges with a spoon or spatula. Make the ganache even, no thick places. Allow ganache to drizzle over the sides of the cheesecake if you prefer. You can fully coat the sides of the cheesecake in ganache as I did mine, or simply give it a pretty drizzle instead. Top with a sprinkling of powdered sugar and a decorative arrangement of maraschino cherries. Cover with cake lid and chill in the fridge before serving.

Done.

As this is a rich, yet not overly sweet cheesecake, you can adjust it to suit your preferences. Dark chocolate and cherries are the main flavors. Originally my intention was to make a batch of chocolate covered cherries. But when I realized I already had everything to make a cheesecake, I used those ingredients to make a triple-chocolate double-cherry cheesecake instead. Yours could be made more sweet than mine, or less rich, or omit the cherries entirely, or perhaps put maraschino cherries on the bottom of the crust before pouring in the batter and baking. Please make it your own creation.

After one friend tried a slice, she almost fell over. At first I thought she hated it, but she told me I need to be selling these. A day later, the lady that did my ID at the DMV told me several times that she'd literally pay me $50 for that cake.. *O.O* ..eh, woah? That took me by surprise! So I'm sharing this so others can make it also.