Mini Cheesecakes

So remember when I made raspberry and blueberry topping for my niece's boyfriends birthday to serve over cheesecake (click here for that post - the topping is so good)? Yeah, well sure enough I forgot to take it with me that night so we ate the cheesecake plain. Actually I bummed some bottled raspberry sauce from the waitress at the restaurant we went too...duh. My bad. Now I have all this topping and wondering what to do with it! I decided to make mini cheesecakes and top with the sauce - and they turned out really good. Whew...I'm glad I could use it so I would stop eating it by the spoonful every time I opened the fridge.

I found a basic recipe that sounded good online at allrecipes (click here for the recipe), the only thing I changed is the crust. Instead of vanilla wafers I made a graham cracker version - in the food processor I ground up graham crackers (note: I used 1 sleeve which held 9 crackers and ended up with exactly one cup - wonder if they package them this way on purpose?), added 4 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and a small pinch of coarse salt and mix well. This made about twice as much as I needed so maybe half the ingredients if you make them.

Put about a teaspoon of the crumb mixture into the bottom of mini cupcake pan (note: I used paper liners which made transporting and clean up so much easier), press gently. Then continue with the recipe.


After they were cooled I removed a little bit from the top using a small spoon, just enough to make a little well in the top of each cheesecake. Spoon some topping into the well and slightly covering the top - too much topping and it'll run off after you remove the paper, not the end of the world certainly but it makes them a little messy. Hmmm, but then you get to lick your fingers... so maybe you do want to add more topping... haha!

• original recipe (see above for the different crust I made)

• 1 (12 oz.) package vanilla wafers
• 2 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 (21 oz.) can cherry pie filling

1. Preheat oven to 350'. Line miniature muffin tins with miniature paper liners. 

2. Crush the vanilla wafers, and place 1/2 t. into each paper cup.

3. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy. Fill each miniature muffin liner with this mixture, almost to the top. 

4. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool. Top with a teaspoonful of cherry pie filling.