A slightly different cheesecake: ricotta hazelnut cheesecake

In this article you will find a recipe for a very special cheesecake. Contrary to what you might expect, it doesn't have a thick layer of cream and doesn't need to be refrigerated for long. In fact, it tastes best even slightly warm. What we think is particularly great, of course: the chocolate ganache that the cake is covered with at the end. We are sure: This ricotta hazelnut cheesecake will blow your socks off as much as it did us! And as always, at the end of the article you will find FAQs for any questions that might arise about the recipe.

You need these ingredients for the cheesecake:

For the cake:

• 300g peeled hazelnuts
• 35g flour
• 160 g coarsely chopped chocolate, preferably with a cocoa content of around 70%
• 100 g ground almonds
• 225g butter, at room temperature and roughly diced (and a little extra for greasing the tin)
• 250g sugar
• 6 eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 400g ricotta
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 0.25 teaspoon salt

For the chocolate water ganache:

• 100 g dark chocolate, preferably with a cocoa content of around 70%, roughly chopped
• 40g sugar
• 40g liquid glucose
• 70 ml water
• The seeds of a vanilla pod
• 40g unsalted butter, also at room temperature and cut into 2cm cubes
• Powdered sugar for serving

From the ingredients to the cake:

1. First preheat the oven to 180°C top/bottom heat or to 160°C fan oven. Then prepare a round springform pan for the cake. To do this, grease the sides and bottom of the mold and then line it with baking paper. The baking paper should be 2 cm above the edge on the sides.
2. Then put the hazelnuts on a baking tray and roast them for 10 minutes. You just want them to get a little color.
3. Take them out of the oven and let them cool completely. Chop 50 g of it into rough pieces and set it aside for decoration later. The remaining hazelnuts and the flour are placed in a high-performance blender, in which you then chop the whole thing into a fine mass.
4. Pour the hazelnut-flour mixture into a bowl and add the chocolate to the mixer. Mix these into coarse pieces and add them to the hazelnut-flour mixture. Now add the ground almonds. Mix the whole thing together, the result should be a bit lumpy, and set the bowl aside again.
5. Now increases the temperature in the oven by 10° C.
6. Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix the mixture on high speed with a hand mixer for about 3 minutes until you get a creamy consistency. Add the egg yolks one by one and stir each one in well. Reduce the mixing speed and add the nut-chocolate-flour mixture and stir it in. Then add the ricotta, vanilla extract and salt and stir it in by hand.
7. Now put the egg whites in a fresh bowl in which you beat them until stiff - using clean and dry mixing attachments. Then fold the egg whites into the dough in 2-3 portions using a dough scraper.
8. The whole thing now goes into the springform pan and is baked on the middle rack for about 60 minutes. The cake is ready when it has turned a nice golden color. To be on the safe side, be sure to do the wooden stick test: If you poke it into the middle of the cake and no raw dough sticks to it, the cheesecake is ready!

Finally: the chocolate ganache and decoration

Finally, you devote yourself to the topping:

1. Put the chocolate in a medium-sized bowl and set it aside for now. Then heat the sugar and glucose together in a small saucepan over low heat until the sugar has dissolved.
2. Increase the heat to medium and let the whole thing cook for about 5 minutes, simmering occasionally. When the liquid has turned a light amber tone, remove the pot from the heat and carefully add the water.
3. Then put the pot back on the stove, add the vanilla and wait, stirring evenly, until the mixture boils again. Remove the hot vanilla caramel from the heat and wait 5 minutes before pouring it over the chocolate in the bowl.
4. Wait another 5 minutes and then stir the contents of the bowl. The whole thing then goes back into the pot and back to low heat.
5. Gradually add the butter while stirring. The ganache is ready when it has an even and shiny consistency.
6. Now dust the cake thoroughly with powdered sugar and then pour the ganache over one half of the cake so that it runs down the sides.
7. The last step is to add the chopped hazelnuts that you set aside at the beginning to the cake. And your slightly different cheesecake is ready :)

FAQ about the ricotta hazelnut cheesecake

How can hazelnuts be replaced?

Unfortunately, a nut allergy is really not that rare. If you still want to bake the recipe, we recommend using cashews instead. In principle, hazelnuts can be replaced with any other nuts!

Is the cake also vegan?

This recipe might actually be difficult to make a vegan version of. The cake contains a relatively large number of eggs, with the yolk and egg white being processed separately. Above all, the consistency of egg whites is not that easy to replicate as a vegan. One idea would be to prepare an aquafaba mixture for the cheesecake, i.e. beat chickpea water (15-30 ml per egg). Please let us know what the end result is if you try this option!

No question, but a suggestion: instead of cake, lots of small cheesecake muffins

If you would rather make several small cakes instead of one large cake, the recipe also works perfectly with muffin tins. When preparing, proceed in the same way as with the large mold, i.e. grease everything, but only line the bottom with circles of baking paper. Also note: The baking time is then reduced to only around 20 minutes.