Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheesecake

So I found this recipe (I can't remember where exactly, but definitely on one of the blogs I follow) and I was sooo excited. I love peanut butter. Love it. As a kid, I was more excited about peanut butter than chocolate. I will break a Reese's cup apart and only eat the peanut butter and toss the chocolate coating. I dipped carrots in peanut butter, apples, everything. Yum. And it's Skippy all the way for me. Love it!!!

So I got this recipe and thought, wow, peanut butter and so easy to make... Which it was. Even with my mom like all over me trying to cook dinner...

And, guess what? I used a water bath. After someone commented about the cracked top on my Oreo cheesecake (yeah, that's right, he told me! Did you not see my berry cheesecake? No cracks there buddy!), I decided to try the waterbath again. This time, I used two layers of heavy duty foil to keep out the water and I had much more time to bake it, so I didn't care if it took forever!

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheesecake

Crust:
2 cups of Oreo cookie crumbs
4 Tbsp of melted butter

Middle filling:
1/3 cup of slightly melted peanut butter
1 large milk chocolate bar, chopped

Cheesecake filling:
3 pkgs (8oz each) cream cheese, softened
1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp flour
3 large eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup peanut butter

Directions:
Preheat over to 300 degrees F. Grease 9-inch springform pan (recipe used 9-inch, but I use a 10-inch cuz it was what I had)
Fill a large roasting pan w/ hot water, about an inch, inch and half up. Set on the bottom rack while the oven is preheating.

In a medium bowl, combine Oreo crumbs and butter and sprinkle evenly on the bottom of the pan. Bake for 10 mins in the oven (not in the water).
Remove when done and rasie temp to 350 degrees F.

Spread the first 1/3 cup of slightly melted peanut butter on top of the crust (doesn't have to be all the way to the sides) and then sprinkly the chopped chocolate on top. If you don't have a large chocolate bar, chocolate chops work well too.

Beat cream cheese until creamy. Add the condensed milk and peanut butter and blend until smooth (make sure you scrape all of the cream cheese off the bottom of the bowl and the sides so it is all incorporated. I forgot to and had some little cream cheese chunks throughout the cake). Add the sugar and flour, beat until just combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, adding the vanilla w/ the last one. Beat until juts combined.
Pour the batter into a foil wrapped springform pan. Try to smooth out the top as much as possible b/c how you put it in is how it looks when you pull it out.

Place the foil-lined filled pan in the water bath.
Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the sides are set and the middle moves slightly. Turn off the oven and crack the door just a little bit. Let the cheesecake sit in the water bath in the oven for at least an hour, no more than 2 hours. Take a butter knife and run it along the edges of the cheesecake so that when the cheesecake cools, it won't be sticking to the sides and make the top crack.

When you pull the cheesecake out of the water bath, it should be cooled enough to remove the springform. Let it cool another 30 minutes or so uncovered.


You can serve it just like above, or (b/c I didn't like the look of the top) you can top it with some melted hot fudge like below. I just splattered it on, but you can make whatever design you'd like.
So there is my beautiful, delicious, not cracked peanut butter cheesecake. It is sooooo good. Good enough that one of my managers threatened to take it in her office and finish it off after having a slice. She didn't, thankfully. She doesn't have a lock on her office door, so I think I would have had to storm the office and yank it from her hands if she had. Amazingly I have leftovers, so after sharing some w/ my cousin, there was enough for my dad. He was happy about it... :)