This Friday a friend of mine invited us over for a dinner party. We’re all about meeting and making new friends, so we excitedly accepted. I offered to bring dessert and reverted back to my favorite – cheesecake!

As you can probably tell from the many blog posts about cheesecake, I’m a bit of a fanatic.

This time, I adapted a new recipe from a great cookbook “I Love Cheesecake” by Mary Crownover called Marbled Grasshopper Cheesecake. It’s a yummy mixture of creme de menthe and chocolate.

This is a delicious cheesecake, with lots of rich, dark chocolate flavor and a hint of mint. It would be perfect for St. Patrick’s day, which is right around the corner.

Marbled Grasshopper Cheesecake Recipe:

Crust Ingredients:

– 18 chocolate mint sandwich cookies

– 5 tablespoons butter

Chocolate Mint Filling Ingredients:

– 32 ounces cream cheese

– 1/2 cup sugar

– 4 large eggs

– 1/4 cup sour cream

– 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

– 2 tablespoons corn starch

– 2 tablespoons cocoa

– 2 tablespoons sugar

– 1/4 cup creme de menthe

– 1 teaspoon mint extract

– a few drops of green food coloring

Chocolate Sour Cream Topping Ingredients:

– 5 ounces chocolate chips

– 1/3 cup sour cream

– Tablespoon creme de menthe

– 1 tablespoon sugar

First, make sure ALL your ingredients are at room temperature- the eggs, sour cream, cream cheese etc. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

To make the crust, put 18 cookies in a plastic baggy and enlist the strength of someone with strong forearms to crush the cookies into crumbs.

Combine the cookie crumbs with the butter and using your fingers, press onto the bottom of a well-greased spring-form pan. Bake the crust for 10 minutes.

Set the crust aside and start on the best part- the chocolate mint filling! Beat together the cream cheese and 1 cup sugar until completely smooth. Make sure there aren’t any cream cheese clumps floating around.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one. Then stir in the sour cream, lemon extract and cornstarch.

Remove one cup of the filling and put it in a bowl. Stir in the cocoa and 2 tablespoons sugar.

Go back to the rest of the filling and mix in the creme de menthe, mint extract and green food coloring until you have a yummy, minty flavor and light green color. You can add more extract if you want a stronger mint flavor.

Here’s what creme de Menthe looks like. You can buy it in the specialty liquor section of your grocery store.

Now your filling is done! Pour half of the mint filling into your pan and smooth the top. Then spoon on half of the chocolate filling in the middle. Pour the rest of the mint over it and top again with the rest of the chocolate.

This is where the fun begins! Take a knife and without disturbing the crust, run it through the mixture to create a pretty marbling effect.

Bake the cheesecake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 200 and bake for another 2 hours or until the center no longer looks wet.

Turn the oven off and remove the cake and run a serrated knife around the edge to unhinge it from the pan. Place the cake BACK into the turned off oven to cool for 2 hours. Then refrigerate overnight.

When you’re ready to serve, whip up the topping. This is really the finale of the dessert and will also help it look really pretty.

I forgot to take photos of the process, but it’s really easy. Just mix together the chocolate chips, sour cream, creme de menthe and sugar in a sauce pot over low heat.

Pour the melted mixture on top of the cake and spread around with a spatula to the edge. I decorated the edge of mine with chocolate chips to add a little crunch to each slice.

Scrumdiddlyumptious! This cheesecake was literally gobbled up before I could get any more glamour shots. A definite crowd-pleaser.