It´s my dad´s birthday today! Yey! Happy Birthday Dad! In my opinion a birthday calls for a gigantic cake, a party, party decoration anda whole load of presents…in my opinion. Unfortunately my dad associates birthday with a simple fruit cake, no presents and some family time. I mean I can understand that, since he is working a lot at the moment and family time is rare for him, but it means that I can´t spend ages with decorating a three layer cake, which is something I really really like. 

This year though I brainstormed about how I can pack all the good stuff in a small, simple cake and I think I came up with a rather good idea. My dad loves cheesecake, so that was the first thing I took into consideration, there is no birthday without somechocolate, so I added virtually chocolate into my cake. As I told you it has to be a simple fruit cake too, so some raspberries made their way into the recipe. Last but not least there had to be something, that adds a little something to whole, a little bit sparkle, a little bitonale my version of birthday. The solution is Salted caramel sauce! I mean come on, if this doesn´t say birthday then what will?

There you go guys: my chocolate-raspberries-salted caramel-cheesecake! For everybody that has the same struggles with their dad, or just fancies a bloomin´lovely cake.

You will need for one cake:

For the dough:

• 300g flour
• 100g sugar
• 1 egg
• 200g butter
• A pinch of salt
• 50g cacao powder

For the cheesecake filling:

• 5 eggs
• 1 pack of vanilla pudding powder
• 1kg cream cheese
• 100g sugar
• 250g raspberries
• 100g blueberries (optional)
• 50g cacao power

For the caramel topping:

• 100g sugar
• A sprinkle of water
• A pinch of salt
• 50ml heavy cream 

1. Preheat your oven to 175C and prepare a round tin with some butter or some baking spray. We want to make the dough first. Just mix all the ingredients and knead it in your stand mixer or with your hands. You can roll out your dough and then put it into you tin, which will get you a very even and professional finish. Or you do it like me and just push the dough into the tin. This will save you a lot of time, but the edges won´t be as smooth as with the roll out method.

2. For the filling, mix together the eggs, pudding powder, cream cheese, and sugar until it is an even mixture. Fill the half of the mixture into your prepared tin. Then mix the rest of your filling with the cacao powder. Before you put this on top, sprinkle your berries (Don´t forget to wash them!) on top of your white mixture and then but the black mixture on top. 

3. For the caramel sauce, take a small pan and put your sugar, salt and water in. Wait until the sugar is melted and completely solved. Make sure that the caramel sauce won´t get to hot. Once the sugar is solved, add a splash of heavy cream and stir really fast until is everything combined. Then add the rest of the heavy cream.

4. Now everything you have to do is to sprinkle the caramel sauce on top of the cake and make some swirls with a fork. Bake everything for 40-45 minutes. Note that you have to cool down cheesecake completely before eating, otherwise you will need up with a rather lovely cake. So if you make this cake for friends, you have to plan enough time to cool down.In my opinion it is best o make the cheesecake the night before.