Russischer Zupfkuchen

Literally translated the name of this cake means "Russian pluck cake", although it might not be of Russian origin at all. It is another cheesecake variant, this time with a chocolate crust and chocolate dough pieces on top. It's one of my favorite cheesecakes because it so nicely combines two great things, cheesecake and chocolate cake.

Again, the original recipe uses Quark, a type of light and soft cheese very popular in Germany, but I exchange it for plain Greek Yoghurt (Fage or Chobani brands come quite close to the consistency of Quark).
In addition, the filling contains a package of vanilla pudding mix. I used a German brand. However, JELL-O cook & serve might work, too (I need to try this in the future), but the regular JELL-O won't work!
The original recipe uses 250 g butter and 500 g Quark for the filling making the cake quite fatty. Since I try to make cakes tasty and somewhat healthier I increased the amount of yoghurt and decreased the amount of butter.

Ingredients:
Crust:
300 g wheat flour
30 g cocoa powder
2 leveled teaspoons baking powder
150 g sugar
1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma
1 egg
150 g soft butter

Filling:
700 g fat-free plain Greek yoghurt (Fage or Chobani brand)
50 g butter
175 g sugar
1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma
3 eggs
1 package Vanilla pudding mix (I use a mix by a German company (Dr. Oetker) but JELL- cook & serve might work, too)

1. Mix flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder in a bowl. Add remaining crust ingredients, and mix with knead hooks of a hand mixer until a dough has formed. Quickly form a ball with your hands, wrap the dough in clear plastic foil and keep in the refrigerator for about 30 min.
2. For the filling, melt butter, then set aside to cool.
3. Grease bottom of springform. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F).
4. Take half of the crust dough, add to the bottom of springform and flatten by either using a rolling pin or your hands. Take half of the remaining dough, form a long coil, and lay out the inner edge of the springform. Push coil against edge of springform until about an inch high.
5. Mix all ingredients for the filling until soft and creamy. Add filling into springform. Pull small pieces off the remaining crust dough, and put on top of the cake.
6. Bake cake for 60 min or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Let cake cool before serving.