Chocolate Tim Tam Cheese Cupcakes with Poached Fruit

As I don't normally measure how much of what I need when I bake, I'm normally left with some leftovers. Some of these are easy to take care of, such as the ganache which can be freezed and used later on but the cheesecake mix has to be used up. So here I was with some ganache and cheesecake mix and decided to mix the two together to form a chocolate cheesecake mix.

Ingredients:
1. Cheesecake mix
2. Chocolate ganache
3. Tim Tams

Method:
1. Mix some ganache into the cheesecake mix
2. Pour a little of the mix on to the cupcake liner before placing the Tim Tam chunk (similar to the "surprise" cheese cupcakes)

3. Cover the Tim Tam chunk with more mix

4. Continue with the rest of your assembly line

5. Baked in at about 160degC (non-fanforced) till top looks brown, loses its gloss and looks slightly "crusty"

6. Cool at room temperature

These smelled so good that I couldn't resist popping one whilst it was still warm. The warm and soft Tim Tam in the middle oozes out with sweet chocolatey flavor almost like a lava chocolate cake.

Since I was actually serving these for a dinner party, I decided to pimp up this dessert with some poached fruit.

Ingredients:
1. Dried fruit
2. Sugar
3. Sweet and dry wine

Method:
1. Pour some of each wine plus the sugar into some dried fruit and bring slowly to a boil
2. Stir frequently, the wine and sugar and fruit should produce a sauce that is very slightly gelatinous, like a thin jam
3. I used a dry red and a red lambrusco for this, the sugar is added to taste so you may add more if you have a sweeter tooth

4. Cool at room temperature

5. Decorate and serve

Tip: The little pattern around the cake was created with the sauce from the poached fruit.

And there we have it, the last cheesecake recipe in D's four-part series. Baking should never be stressful or difficult, it's actually alot of fun, especially when there's heaps of chocolate nibbling and wine drinking in betweeen heh.

D