I love these because they can look formal or informal and the topping choices are endless. I read that the reason the founder of The Cheesecake Factory chose cheesecake as his main dessert is because it was always the most popular at his mom’s restaurant. These usually go very quickly on any dessert table.
The crust is up to you. Here I have included the super easy and fast method. I try to make everything from scratch especially considering Nilla wafers don’t even have real vanilla in them anymore, but I haven’t found a suitable copycat of their recipe. I personally love oreo cookies as the crust. You could also go traditional and crumble up some graham crackers and mix with melted butter and sugar. Or crumble up some oreos and mix with melted butter (there is already enough sugar in the cookie that additional is unnecessary).
**My notes from past failures of these.**
1. Make sure the cream cheese is good quality and fresh.
2. Make sure the cream cheese and eggs are at room temperature. Or you get lumps. (They still are tasty though)
3. I had much better luck adding the lemon juice at the very end per instructions below. Adding it in with the eggs curdled my batter.
4. Make them 1 day ahead of time. They taste much much better the next day after sitting in the refrigerator.
5. Add the topping up to 2 hours prior to serving. Otherwise it seeps into the cheesecake.
6. Mix everything on LOW speed. You don’t want air in a cheesecake.
Mini Cheesecakes
yield 14 mini cheesecakes
14 vanilla wafers
2 – 8 oz. packages of cream cheese, room temp.
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temp.
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1.5 cups cherry pie filling (or use chocolate syrup, caramel, chocolate chips, blueberry pie filling, etc.)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a regular size muffin tin with liners and place one vanilla wafer inside flat-side down.
2. On an electric mixer with paddle attachment on LOW, beat the cream cheese until smooth and fluffy.
3. Add sugar until smooth. Scrape and eggs one at a time. Before fully incorporated, scrape slowly and frequently. Add eggs slowly.
4. Now add the lemon juice. (or you could use lemon zest, or orange zest, or vanilla extract…)
5. I use my large cookie scoop to measure 3 Tablespoons of batter. This is enough to fill the well about 2/3 full.
6. Put in the oven for 15-17 minutes. They won’t jiggle in the middle and that is how I know they are done.
7. Prefer but not necessary: store in refrigerator overnight. Top with filling just before serving.
Recipe from allrecipes.com
I love these! Seems everyone does. I try to find Chocolate Wafers for a change of taste with mini choc chip on top or raspberry presrves….I get the low fat of everything I can to appease the calorie concerned people. One of the most versatile deserts.
Where do you buy the chocolate wafers? I tried to find them to make my Raspberry White Chocolate Cheesecake. I never found them, so I had to scrape the oreo filling out of the oreo cookies.
I make similar recipe but instead of using vanilla wafer or chocolate wafer my recipe calls for a cake mix ss the bottom crust, just prepare cake mix yellow or chocolate and add 1 tbsp to boron of muffin cup and tamp down slightly before you bake. I hope this helps.
[…] freeze cream cheese – it is not very good when it thaws. 7. Day before event: Bake Mini Cheesecakes using recipe here. **TIP** For super smooth awesome cheesecakes: always always have everything at room temperature. […]