Sprinkles No-Bake Cheesecake

Funny story - at my sister's work they take turns bringing in birthday treats, you bring for the person who has the next birthday after yours. Every year when it's her turn to bring in for the guy (I'll call him P.) who has the birthday after her (and it's always been P., no one has hired in to change the order) I always volunteer to make the dessert for her because...well I think we all know why - she dislikes baking but I love it! So over the years I've made quite a few different things for her to take in, P. doesn't like buttercream frosting so I come up with something other than the usual frosted cupcakes for him (last year it was a giant whoopee pie). Well this year another man has hired in that shares the same birthday with P. - they were all discussing this and someone said they were sorry for my sister cuz now she'll have 2 people to bake for and P.  goes "no, I feel sorry for her sister!". Ha! That made me laugh...

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Anyway - this year I decided to make Sprinkles No-Bake Cheesecake and it turned out pretty good. It tastes great, there are just a couple things I'd do different next time - here's the recipe I followed and then I'll post my notes after.

Crust:
2 1/2 cups Golden Birthday Cake Oreo crumbs (I found it's about 25 oreos FYI)
3 T. melted butter
2 T. sprinkles

Filling:
24 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoon butter flavor
3 T. sprinkles, plus more for decorating
12 oz. Cool Whip, divided
*note I added a big spoonful of sour cream to the batter, I like that flavor in cheesecake - you do not have to do this and it's still delish.

Instructions:
1. Combine oreo crumbs with melted butter and sprinkles, press into the bottom and halfway up the sides of a 9" springform pan. Set in the refrigerator to firm.
2. Mix cream cheese, sugar, flour, vanilla, butter flavor together in a large bowl until smooth and well combined.
3. Gently stir in 8oz Cool Whip and sprinkles.
4. Pour filling evenly into the crust and smooth the top.
5. Refrigerate for about 4-6 hours or until firm.
6. Remove cheesecake from springform pan and put on a cake plate. Top with remaining whipped cream and additional sprinkles. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Notes: spray the springform pan before putting the crust in to make it easier to remove the cheesecake from the pan. make sure the crust around the sides of the pan is not too thin or it will crumble when you remove the finish cake from the pan - try to get it even all around the sides and the bottom. I put the cool whip in a decorating bag and piped stars around the top and added sprinkles, it wanted to spread though and didn't stay in high peaks. I would probably make fresh whipped cream in the future for decorating - or just spread the cool whip evenly across the top (or swirling it around with a spoon would be pretty) and then add sprinkles. Oh, and you will use a small bottle of sprinkles for this cake so make sure you have enough!

I didn't know there was such a thing as birthday cake oreos! Where have I been?

Sarge wondering why I'm holding this pan over his head..

I based the idea for this cheesecake from this recipe (click here to see it), then changed it a bit.

Birthday Dessert Assortment

Went to a birthday dinner the other night and was assigned dessert :) The birthday boy doesn't like cake so I decided to make mini ice cream sandwiches and mini banana cream pies. Both are super simple:

For the bite-sized ice cream sandwiches Brooke and I made basic chocolate chip cookies following the recipe on the back of the chip bag, but we substituted 1 cup of m&ms for 1 cup of the chocolate chips just to be different. I had what I thought was a super good idea to make one giant ice cream cookie sandwich so split the cookie dough in half and put each in a large round baking pan and baked until done. I will keep working on this idea in the future but this time it didn't work the way I envisioned - each half was too thick to make into a sandwich (well Dave didn't think it was too thick, but he would enjoy eating a super thick sweet cookie sandwich LOL, for me it would have been way too much cookie).

I almost gave up on the idea and just served the giant cookies without making a sandwich, but then figured I'd attempt to make mini bite size sandwiches first. So I put mini cupcake liners in a small cupcake pan, then using a small round cookie cutter I cut out circles of the baked cookie and put in the bottom of the liner. Scoop a small bit of softened vanilla ice cream on top and then finish with another small circle of cookie. Freeze until ready to eat (obviously).  Turned out good and everyone loved them.

For the banana cream pies: first I baked the pie crust blind (that means without filling in them). Roll out premade pie dough and cut with a small 2" circle cutter, gently press into a mini cupcake pie (I've done this part before, click here for that post). When you bake crust without filling in it the dough will want to puff up so you need to weigh it down - they sell pie weights for this exact reason but I do not have any, an easy substitute is to weigh it down with dried beans. But I didn't have any of those either so I went online to see if I could find other substitute ideas - there were a few suggestions (rice and popcorn are the 2 I remember seeing, but doesn't baking popcorn seem like a mess waiting to happen?) and I went with trying dry rice. It worked really good, you just have to make sure to get all of the rice out after the crust has been baked - pretty sure baked in rice isn't going to taste good! I just used the edge of a small spoon handle to lightly scrap the rice out. Not the perfect scenario but it worked and the dough didn't puff up.

For the filling I just made banana pudding using 1 1/2 cups of milk, let it set up and then added chopped banana and using my small cookie scoop filled the pie crust with the pudding. Top with either a little piece of banana or cool whip.

In case those 2 things weren't enough Brooke made brownies that turned out so good - I think the secret was she put them in cupcake liners to bake, love that idea, and they got rave reviews!

Easy and delicious :)