Chocolate Shot Cheesecake

This is on page 161 of San Francisco Firehouse Favorites by Tony Calvello, Bruce Harlow, Georgia Sackett, and Shirley Sarvis, published 1965 by Bonanza Books — a locally famous, long out-of-print cookbook put together by SFFD firefighters blessed with gastronomic sophistication.

SFFD tradition held that, because of a grueling schedule of a 24-hour watch, from 8 a.m. to 8 a.m., then get two days off, repeating this pattern for 16 days (then a longer break), "every day is a Friday and every meal is a banquet".

Yields:

10 servings

Time Required:

70 mins. cooking time
30 mins. prep. time
1 hr. 40 mins total time

Ingredients & Preparation:

Crumb Crust:

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ cup melted butter

Mix together thoroughly crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter, and press over bottom and sides of a buttered 9" spring form pan. Bake in a slow oven (300°F) for 5 minutes; cool.

Cheese Filling:

2 large packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
½ cup sugar
1 tsp. grated lemon rind
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
½ tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, separated

In a large mixing bowl, beat cheese until fluffy. Add sugar, lemon peel and juice, and vanilla; beat thoroughly. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, and fold in. Turn into crumb crust. Bake in a slow oven (300°F) for 55 minutes, or until golden and set.

Topping:

1 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
Chocolate shot candy decorations

Mix together sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. Spread over top of hot cake. Return cake to slow oven (300°F), and bake 10 minutes more. Cool thoroughly. Sprinkle top with chocolate shot. Remove sides from pan. Makes 10 servings.

Cook's Notes:

Bob Burns credited the original recipe to his wife, and says the original called for half a cube of butter for the wife, but he prefers to use the whole thing. Likewise, his wife's version said to bake for 45 minutes, but he recommends baking until brown on top, which might even take an hour, and that it should be "nice and stiff".

The term "chocolate shot" seems to have dropped out of usage, since 1965. Personally, I infer from a different old recipe that it means chocolate sprinkles. My friend AJ suggests it might refer (instead) to a product like Rainbowland Candy Co.'s chocolate-flavored liquid candy in syringe packaging (suitable for writing, or making a figure atop the cake). Either sounds plausible; be creative!

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/chocolate-shot-cheesecake.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Apr. 26, 2024. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2024 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)

Image (used, here, unmodified) is © 2021 by my friend Evan Prodromou, who licensed it for use under CC-BY-SA-4.0 International. Our thanks for Evan's generosity. (Evan's photo is specifically of "a slice of New York cheesecake with blueberry topping", which seems close enough.)