Baked Mini Cheesecake

Since stumbling onto a food blogging event on cheesecake, Hay Hay Its Donna Day (HHDD#10), there were so many recipes that intrigued me but I decided to start with the Mini Rasberry Swirl Cheesecake entry because I had just bought the same foil cupcake liners and I wanted to try them out.

The recipe originally came from Taste Magazine but I adapted it. I had already opened a pack of Arnott's Chocolate Ripple which was not going to last much longer despite being kept in an airtight container (nothing stays crisp in the humidity here). Use any finely ground biscuit as the base, preferably not too sweet since the cream cheese mixture takes care of that. Pressing the biscuit into the bottom of the foil liners was made easier using the base of a small plastic cup.

The sugar has been reduced since the original recipe used lemon and the tartness had to be taken care of. I topped these cheesecakes with melted white chocolate but any fruit puree should work well too.

Mini Baked Cheesecakes
makes 12

1 cup finely ground biscuits
2 1/2 tbs butter, melted
375g cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/4 cup white chocolate chips, melted

Preheat the oven at 320F. Mix ground buscuits and melted butter, divide among 12 paper or foil cupcake liners, pressing down firmly. Bake for 5 minutes then remove and cool. Reduce oven to 260F.
Beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy then add the eggs and combine well. Fill each of the cupcake liners almost to the top then drizzle with the melted white chocolate. Bake for 40-50 minutes until just set and no longer wobbly. They expand a little in the oven and shrink upon cooling.

Verdict: I like to eat this straight out of the fridge when the base is firm. The flavours were as expected and the cheesecake texture was not too dense although the shrinking didn't make it so pretty.