Mini Cheesecakes!

I love cheesecake! They are fairly tricky to bake because they tend to crack, they are very rich and not something you make on a regular basis. But a few months ago I discovered this recipe for mini cheesecakes and I was really excited to try it out.

Cheesecake

Its super simple, so long as you can count to 2. :)

2 bricks of cream cheese (softened)
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

Crust
This is my new favourite cheesecake crust recipe, courtesy of Bakerella.

3/4 cup Biscoff* cookie crumbs (or regular graham cracker crumbs)
3 tbsp melted butter

Topping
Your favourite fruit
Your favourite corresponding jam or syrup

* Biscoff cookies make an AMAZING cheesecake crust. But they are a little hard to find in Canada, although I've discovered that London Drugs stocks them but I haven't found anywhere else that does. If you can't find them, just use graham cracker crumbs or chocolate cookie crumbs, or whichever kind of cookie crumbs you like.

Prep: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line prepare about 18 muffin cups.
Crust: Take your cookies and put them in a food processor. Run until the cookies have become fine cookie crumbs. Add melted butter. Stir until all the cookie crumbs are well coated. Press crumb mixture into bottom of muffin cups.
Cheesecake: Beat cream cheese on its own until it looks whipped. Add sugar, beat some more. Add eggs and vanilla beat, until smooth. Spoon batter into muffin cups until each cup is almost full. Bake for about 15-20 minutes.
Topping: When cheesecake has cooled microwave the jam just a little so that it is just a little more liquid-y. Then top each cheesecake with fruit and spoon jam over top.

I love, love, love this recipe. It makes the perfect size of cheesecakes for a dessert. Also, it looks really elegant, and if you serve them at a party or something people will think you spent a lot of time on them. :) In fact, they are so elegant, that a few weeks after I tried the recipe for the first time, I ended up making over 100 of them for a semi-formal Christmas banquet.Unfortunately, I was a little busy helping run the banquet, so I didn't manage to get a really good picture of all of the mini-cheesecakes. But it was pretty crazy. Also, note the cute little Christmas-y muffin cups, I really loved those.

One of the other reasons I love this recipe so much is because its so flexible. You can experiment with toppings (for the banquet, one of the toppings was pecans and caramel sauce, those ones disappeared pretty fast) or with crusts (like chocolate crumbs!) or you could even try playing with the filling, such as adding chocolate or raspberry sauce.