Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

Last year for my birthday my handsome boyfriend surprised me with a home-made black forest cake, it was a little free form but it was so delicious, so when his birthday came around this year I wanted to surprise him with something similar - and more importantly something wheat free so I could enjoy it too! So I made what I call a black forest cheesecake - here is what it looks like....
please try not to drool... hahaha!

I created the same chocolate cake filled with cherries and when I served it I topped it with fresh whipped cream and a couple of maraschino cherries. This cheesecake was such a success... Several weeks ago I made a praline topped pumpkin cheesecake for a good friend but it disappeared so fast there was no photographing it! This one I made sure to be able to share it with all of you. This is rich - very rich I hoped that the cherries would cut through but they seemed to add to the chocolatey-ness and it kept it a little gooey in the center which I loved!
Perfect for a birthday celebration and would also make a fantastic addition to a holiday table.

Here is the recipe:

Crust:
2 Cups cookie crumbs (I used graham, but chocolate and ginger are also nice)
3 Tbsp melted butter

Cake:
3 packages of room temp Cream Cheese
1 bag of semi sweet Chocolate Chips
1 & 1/2 Cups Sugar
1/2 C Sour Cream
1 Tbsp Vanilla
4 Large Eggs
1 Can Cherry Pie Filling

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

For the crust simply combine the cookie crumbs and the melted butter and press into the bottom of the pan and up the sides as you like. Bake it for 10 minutes, and remove the crust from the oven allowing it to cool.

Turn the oven up to 350 degrees

In the meantime I make the cake mix. 
For this recipe I used a food processor, but you could use a counter mixer, hand mixer or good old fashioned elbow grease. Begin by melting the chocolate, add the cream cheese and whip it until it is smooth, add the melted chocolate and combine, add the sugar, sour cream and vanilla, combine until it is all incorporated, then add eggs one at a time until they are combined, take as many opportunities to scrape down the sides as you need (using the food pro you need to do this often).
Poor 1/2 of the recipe into the cooled crust (mine wasn't very cooled, so there's no need to be to strict here) then I opened the can of cherries and carefully created a layer, I had to do so in little dabs as my cheesecake mixture was quite runny, you won't be able to smooth it so just add it in small dabs working your way around until there is a nice layer, while I was doing this I was sure that it was all going to sink to the bottom but as you can see by the picture it worked out pretty good!
Then pour the remaining batter on and bake it for an hour and 10 minutes. Allow to cool for an hour or 2 and then refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

I was a little overzealous and wanted to eat it after cooling on the counter for several hours, there was no way it was coming out of my spring form pan! (Which I seriously recommend for making cheesecakes and quiche too! Makes it so much easier to cut!)
Go ahead and make this right away!

Happy Holidays!
Love Tiff