New Year cheesecake

After my success with the Christmas style cheesecake (created for the annual Christmas coffee), I decided to make anew cheesecake with the theme of New Year using a Philadelphia recipe. The New Year theme comes from the bottom layer of marzipan cake and the addition of sparkling wine in the cream cheese base.

I followed the recipe without making any modifications.
Another time I would bake the marzipan cake bottom layer some more, at it is too the wet side in my opinion.
I am also uncertain, if the layer of Daim chocolate should be a part of the cake another time, as Daim is not representing New Year in my opinion, but it does add a crunchy layer to a cheesecake with a lot of soft texture.
And finally I would reduce the actual portion of the cheese cake layer to half the amount as it become to heavy, when eating the cake.
The taste part of the cake works very nice with the addition of sparkling wine into the cream cheese cake mass.

New Year cheesecake: - 10-14 servings

Bottom layer:

• 150 g sugar
• 2 egg whites or 67 g pasteurised egg white
• 300 g marzipan - roughly grated
• 40 g dark chocolate - finely chopped
• 112 g Daim chocolate - finely chopped

Cream cheese cake mass:

• 900 g full fat cream cheese
• 200 g quark /fromage fraise
• 100 g icing sugar
• 1 vanilla pod - only the corns
• 7 sheets of gelatine
• 3 dl sparkling wine

Decoration:

• 10-12 fresh strawberries

Bottom layer:

1. Heat up up the oven to 220'C.
2. Whip the sugar and egg whites into a foamy mass.
3. Afterwards add in the grated marzipan, keep whipping until the mass is homogeneous.
4. Cover the bottom layer of the spring form with baking parchment.
5. Fill the marzipan cake mass into the spring form, distribute the mass evenly in the form.
6. Bake the marzipan cake bottom layer at 220'C for 15 minutes.
7. Remove the cake from the oven.
8. After a few minutes spread the chopped dark chocolate on top of the marzipan cake. Let the dark chocolate melt, use a brush to spread the melted chocolate evenly on top of the marzipan cake.
9. Let the cake cool down.
10. Spread the chopped Daim chocolate on top of the dark chocolate layer.

Cream cheese cake mass:

1. Add the gelatine sheets into bowl filled with cold water, let the gelatine sheets soak for 5 minutes.
2. Add the cream cheese into a medium-large mixing bowl. Whip the cream cheese together.
3. Add in the quark, and the mass together.
4. Remove the vanilla corns from the vanilla pod, use a spoon full of the icing sugar to separate the vanilla corns from each other.
5. Add in the vanilla corns and icing sugar, and whip everything together.
6. Heat up 1½ dl of the sparkling wine in a small bowl placed in cooking pot with hot water. Add in the gelatine sheets. Stir until the gelatine sheets are dissolved.
7. Afterwards add in the remaining 1½ dl sparkling wine.
8. Add in the sparkling wine little by little into the cream cheese cake, while you whip the mass. Whip the mass very well to ensure, that the gelatine is evenly distributed to avoid gelatine strings.
9. Fill the cream cheese cake mass on top of the marzipan cake layer in the spring form.
10. Store the cake cold in the refrigerator for minimum 4-5 hours or night over, so it can set.
11. Remove the cheesecake from the spring form.
12. Divided the fresh strawberries into half, place the strawberry pieces around the cake, before serving it.
13. Serve, perhaps with a glass of sparkling wine ?