Chocolate Cheesecake

I used to be famous for this recipe.  It's extremely rich, not surprising since it has 8 ozs of sour cream and 1 lb of cream cheese.  It really is very good.  I don't remember where it came from, other than it obviously was cut out of the newspaper.

One note - The recipe uses chocolate wafer crumbs for the crust, which is similar to a graham cracker crust. The standard chocolate wafer used for this was Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafters. However - Nabisco surprisingly took these off the market. There may be other brands out there, but anyway America's Test Kitchen created a recipe that they say is a good stand-in, click here to view it.

Ingredients

1-1/3 cups chocolate wafer crumbs (See my note above about the chocolate wafers. )
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup melted butter
1-1/2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons rum
8oz container of sour cream
16oz cream cheese, room temperature
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature.

Instructions

1. For crust, mix wafer crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, and butter and pat into 9-inch pie pan (Note: WRONG, this recipe makes a lot of batter, a plain pie pan won't work. You need a fairly deep pan like a springform. Pat into the bottom and sides).

2. Melt chocolate (I do it in a saucepan held above simmering water. Don't let the saucepan touch the water - believe it or not that can burn the chocolate). Beat eggs, sugar and rum. Add sour cream. Cream the cream cheese, add the chocolate, then the sour cream / egg / rum mixture, then the butter. Blend. Bake for about an hour in a 325 degree oven. Cool at least an hour before serving.

Note: It's hard to tell when this is done, it isn't supposed to cook until a toothpick comes out dry. If you shake the pan it should be a little wobbly in the center still. This recipe makes more batter than will probably fit in even a springform pan. Try not to overfill the pan, the batter expands as it cooks and too much batter will cause the cheesecake to crack heavily and possibly overflow the pan. Most cheesecake recipes say to bake the cheesecake pan in a water bath. That's done by wrapping the springform pan in foil, putting it in a larger pan like a roaster and pouring hot water around it until it comes about half-way up the sides. Supposedly this helps prevent the cheesecake from cracking. I haven't tried this.