And a crust? Graham cracker - so boring. :-( What else does chocolate go well with (ok what DOESN'T it)...coffee, no...cookie, again so over done...salted pretzel - hey now we are getting somewhere!! Sweet, tart, chocolate & salty. Home run!
Onto the cheesecake. Not hard right, google a recipe or two from epicurious or joythebaker.com. No big deal.
HA!! Three cheesecake books, 10 cooking websites later and holy hell there are so many ways to make a simple cheesecake!! Cream cheese, ricotta cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, even cottage cheese!! Aggggg!! And the eggs - well you could beat them in one at a time, separate the whites and beat them to stiff peaks, maybe you'd like a few extra yolks!! E-gats the options are overwhelming! I found a New York style recipe with 8 - yea 8 packs of cream cheese!!!
So lets boil things down just a bit, shall we. Cottage cheese is used to reduce fat - HA, well that is out then isn't it? Sour cream is said to add tang, eh don't really care for that it will be masked by the chocolate anyway. But it seems you need to cut the cream cheese with something. I like heavy cream in almost everything, lets go with that one. The eggs, well heavy New York style recipes seem to agree on one egg per pound of cream cheese plus 2 -3 yolks for added texture & richness. I like texture & richness. Now the ricotta, that sounds intriguing. Really only because I have been positively dying to use my mother's homemade ricotta cheese in a recipe. As it is I sweeten it with sugar and mix it with Special K for breakfast, like a parfait of sweet yumminess.
The ricotta one didn't rise. Odd.
Onto the
pretzel crust. Graham cracker crusts are just crushed crackers, melted butter
and sugar. So could we just replace with pretzels? Well no, turns
out that becomes just a crumbly pile of crust. Then I found a super yummy
recipe from one Colleen Grape. She adds flour, one egg & treats it like a
shortbread dough. Oh my, it's scrumptious out of the bowl.
The cream cheese & heavy cream version puffed just beautifully and browned nicely. It created a tempting well in the middle which I happily filled with raspberry jam. Couldn't help myself. 
