Chocolate Cheesecake Ingredients

Asked by Redpath. Answered on 19th October 2015

Full question

I would like to make the Chocolate Cheesecake but unfortunately, where I live in Greece, I can't buy custard powder, sour cream or cocoa powder. Can you suggest alternatives or should I just make something else? Thank you.

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Cheesecake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) contains custard powder but this can be easily be substituted with the same quantity of cornflour (cornstarch) and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. The cocoa powder is there to add richness to the chocolate cheesecake batter but coffee is also very complimetary to chocolate and you could use 1 teaspoon of instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon of hot water instead.

The sour cream is the most difficult ingredient to substitute. Sour cream usually has a fat content of about 14% and yogurt is the closest alternative but had a lower fat content and can be less stable when cooked. As the sour cream is a small proportion of the overall ingredients, and other ingredients such as the eggs and cream cheese should help to stabilise the batter as it cooks, then yogurt is probably the best alernative. We would suggest looking for a thick Greek cow's milk yogurt with a fat content that is as high as possible (perferably 5% fat content or more). However as we have not tested this alterntive we regret that we cannot guarantee the results.