Cheesecake

Chocolate Marbled Christmas Cheesecake!

I wanted to make a special dessert for Christmas, so decided to attempt a cheesecake.  Cheesecake is easy to make in places like Canada, the States, and England (I have successfully made ones in all those places), but slightly more complicated in Tanzania.  For starters, there is no cream cheese here.  And I have no cheesecake pan.  And there is no sour cream here.  So, what else is there to do but make your own?  I bought this strange thing sold here that can only be described as thick, chunky milk.  I have no idea how they make it, but it's sold in 500ml (for you Americans, that's a bit over a pint) containers and looks revolting.

Using a rag, a cat toy with a long ribbon (we didn't have any string on hand), and a small mixing bowl, I rigged up a way to strain the chunky milk like I was using cheesecloth or something more professional.  Letting it drain for about eight hours in the fridge got it to the right consistency.  I bought some yogurt a missionary friend made (from scratch... plain yogurt isn't exactly sold here, either) and strained a few cups of that, too.  In the end, after three days of draining and straining, I had enough "cream cheese/sour cream"!

And you know what?  It tasted great.  Maybe not quite like normal cheesecake, but it was quite yummy.  I mixed in some cocoa to some of it and made this nice marble pattern that was so pretty I got Andrew to take a picture before we cut into it.