Chocolate fudge brownie cheesecake

What's this I hear you say, is it possible to improve on cheesecake, or on a chocolate fudge brownie? Yes, you can, you can stick them together...

When marvellous mum and dad were down recently, with Brainy bro and his lovely partner, I felt inspired to bake this wonderful sounding cake. The actual recipe called for another layer on top, or raspberries, creamed with mascarpone and icing sugar I think, but deciding that this might be one layer too much, I decided to retain the sharpness of the raspberries by leaving them as they were (and I didn't have any mascarpone anyway!)

Marvellous mum was my beautiful assistant and as soon as Darling boy was having his nap we got busy in the kitchen and here is what we produced...Very rich, very scrumptious and good with a hot coffee.

On Sunday we had family coming over, and Marvelous mum was busy in the kitchen- where she is such a star, preparing a delicious lamb dish roasted with all sorts of scrumptious spices.

Marvelous mum had asked me to make pud and the day before whilst in the supermarket decided that chocolate cheesecake would be a good partner to lamb in the summer, eaten in the garden.  I half guessed what might be needed for such a feast.  Once I had found a recipe I liked the look of from t'internet (a Gordon Ramsey recipe, and whilst I'm not a fan of all the swearing and shouting, I have to admit, the cake did sound good)

A short trip back to the supermarket to pick up the forgotten ingredients later and after dinner, I set to in the kitchen.  Marvelous mum and Brainy bro lent a hand and before long the cheesecake was sitting in the oven.  After 30 minutes of cooking, I turned off the heat and left the cheesecake overnight to slowly cool (did ya' know this prevents it cracking, clever eh?!)

Lunch time the next day rolled 

around, and the cheesecake went down a storm.  The berries went nicely with the sweetness.  The swirls of dark chocolate hadn't incorporated into the cake as I had imagined, and had set hard. However, when sliced into, it did give a nice contrast (very reminiscent of Magic Topping, the most fantastic icecream topping of my childhood) 

Only in the Ramsey cheesecake, it was a slightly more grown up version.