Isaura - Polish cheesecake chocolate cake

I always wonder what should I talk with you about. The weather? The cats? Life philosophy? 

The cats are sleeping, the weather is awful and I wish I could follow this philosophy. Well I can, but I just don't know the answer to the question yet or maybe I'm just a little bit too scare to answer it. 

Anyway let's talk about Polish cakes.  

After I shared this cake with my coworkers I heard from one of them "I've never eaten something like that, it's chocolate cake and it's cheesecake". Yes, indeed it is a chocolate cake and cheesecake in one, but don't tell me you never thought about it before.

The origin of the name probably is based on the Brazilian tv series "Isaura the Slave Girl". It was broadcasted in Poland in 1986 on Sundays. I was only 4, but I remember that everybody watched it. My parents say it was so popular that all streets in cities went empty as literally everybody was watching it. 

Isaura was one of my favourite cakes during high school. I used to bake it in something called prodiż (electric baking tin), you probably won't believe it, but most of the cakes baked there perfectly. It was also great for potato cake, or casseroles. This time I went for other recipe than usually as it had less butter and sugar, but it is as good as I remember. 

Isaura - Polish cheesecake chocolate cake

Recipe from Moje Wypieki

For a 22x34 cm baking tin

Notes: This is really big cake, if you don't plan to share it with bunch of people, make half of batch.  

Chocolate cake:

• 1 cup milk
• 125 g butter 
• 2 Tbsp cacao
• 3/4 cup sugar 
• 50 g dark chocolate 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking soda 
• 3 eggs (egg yolks and whites separately)

Cheesecake layer

• 750 g full-fat or half-fat curd cheese, ground at least twice 
• 4 eggs (egg yolks and whites separately)
• 2/3 cup caster sugar
• 1 Tbsp plain flour 
• 1 Tbsp potato starch or corn starch
• 2 tsp vanilla extract 
• 50 g butter, room temperature

For chocolate cake layer:
Heat milk, butter, cacao, sugar and chocolate in a medium pot stirring until combine. Take from the heat an let it cool.
Sieve flour and baking soda. Add to the cooled chocolate mixture along with egg yolks and mixed until well combined.

For cheesecake layer:

Put curd cheese, egg yolks, sugar, plain flour, potato starch, vanilla extract and butter in a bowl and mix until all ingredients combine.  Don't overmix it.

In a separate bowl whip all egg whites until stiff. Carefully stir in half of it to the chocolate mixture and other half to the cheesecake mixture.

Line in a baking tin with baking paper. 

Place half of the chocolate mixture in a tin and smooth it down. 

Then place all cheesecake mixture and cover it with the remaining chocolate mixture. 

Bake at 175ºC/155ºC fan for about 60 minutes. 

Cool down with a slightly ajar oven and place in a fridge for a night.

Enjoy!