Red Velvet Cheesecake

I spend a TON of time griping and being whistful/emotional/mopey on this blog. Time for some FOOD.

BC and I have this things about red velvet foods being spun throughout our relationship. There is a BALLIN bakery in his hometown that makes amazing red velvet cupcakes. Every time he would come visit me at law school, he would bring them. When I would go visit, we would make a stop. Our wedding cake was half red velvet. And, BC being the fantastic hubs that he is, had some of those delish red velvet cupcakes shipped directly to the house as part of my Valentine's present. The box still smelled like the bakery. It was ahhhhhmazing.

So, thanks to it being Valentine's Day and all, I decided we needed red velvet something. I certainly was not going to try to one-up the bakery cupcakes or our wedding cake because, I mean, hello, I'm not dumb. I did, however, stumble across this little beauty of a recipe on the McCormick website of all places:

Red Velvet Cheesecake

Ingredients

2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened (definitely used the full fat cream cheese on this one. I'm not sure cheesecakes turn out the same if you don't.....wasn't going to risk it!)
1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs (large)

2 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate, melted (I used semi-sweet chocolate chips I had on hand, just melted in the microwave. I'm pretty sure you can use whatever, but I would think that semi-sweet or dark chocolate would work the best here.)

1 tablespoon red food coloring (I used food color gel I had leftover from Christmas cookie decorating. I used pretty much the whole bottle to make the deep red color. Plus, I heard that gel food coloring makes deeper/more vibrant color in food.)

1 prepared chocolate crumb crust, 6 ounces (I wasn't really aware they had these in the store, but Oreo makes an Oreo crust! Its really dark, almost black in color, and so cool looking!)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating on low speed after each addition just until blended.
2. Measure 1 cup batter into medium bowl. Stir in melted chocolate and food color. Pour into crust. Top with remaining (plain) cheesecake batter.
3. Bake 40 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool completely on wire rack.
4. Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.

The picture from the website is very fancy:

Our slice looked more like this:

I must say, I am very impressed with myself. I think I did a fantastic job on this one (very surprised). And BC heartily approved. It tastes really awesome and that bottom red layer really makes it look cool. 

Happy Valentine's Day to all! Go eat something red today.