Multi-flavor Mini Cheesecakes

Okay, picture this: you've been invited to game night with a couple you definitely want to be "Real Friends" with, and you've been asked to bring a dessert of some sort. Your guidelines: "we like all sweets!" - useless. Time to panic. What can you make that everyone likes, that gives options to choose from, that is something you can eat in between rounds, and that will impress your new friends so much they'll keep inviting you to game night?

Did you guess four flavors of cupcake-sized cheesecakes? I hope so, since that's what I went with. I ended up making four flavors: plain/classic, strawberry, Nutella, and salted caramel. Surely, between those four flavors, there's something everyone likes, right?

For a dessert that turned out this pretty, it was relatively low effort and didn't take me too long (about an hour, including cleanup and excluding chilling in the fridge).

Recipe

Crust Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cup of graham cracker crumbs*

• 4 tablespoons melted butter

• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Filling Ingredients:

• 2 8 oz blocks of cream cheese (softened to room temperature)

• 1/2 cup sour cream (at room temperature)

• 2 eggs

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice**

Flavor Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons Nutella***

• 5-6 medium sized strawberries

• 1/4 cup salted caramel****

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.

2. Line muffin tins with paper liners (you'll get 24 cheesecakes from this recipe).

3. Mix graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, and sugar together into a sandy mixture. Scoop a heaping tablespoon of mixture into each muffin liner. You should use all the mixture, but add more to any that look low if you have some leftover after your heaping-tablespoon-scooping.

4. Press the crumbs down to flatten them into a more solid crust.

5. Bake for 5 minutes, remove from oven, and set aside.

6. With a paddle or whisk attachment on your mixer, combine cream cheese and sugar and beat until smooth. You may need to scrape down the edges to be sure everything is uniform.

7. Add sour cream, vanilla extract, and lemon juice, beat until homogeneous and smooth. You can skip the lemon juice if you don't like the flavor, but I find it gives the cheesecakes a delicious brightness.

8. Add two eggs and beat just until combined - don't over mix at this stage.

9. Separate your batter into four equal portions. I made approximately 29 oz of filling, so I split it into ~7.25 oz portions in separate bowls.

10. Split one batter bowl evenly between six crusts in your muffin tins.

11. Use your stand mixer to add Nutella into one batter bowl, beat on medium speed until uniform. Split into six crusts in your muffin tins.

12. Chop your strawberries, making sure to remove stems and leaves, then add a teaspoon or so of water and heat on your stove on medium/low heat until they break down a bit. Put this into your food processor until it's pretty smooth, then strain out the seeds. Mix 2/3 of it into one bowl of filling until uniform, then add the remaining third and don't mix as well if you'd like a more swirled look. Mix it all together if you'd like a more uniform pink cheesecake. Split into six crusts in your muffin tins.

13. Using a spoon, drizzle a little bit of salted caramel on the last six crusts. (NOTE: putting caramel directly onto the crust will make the crust a little thicker and have more of a crunch to it. If you've had a stroopwafel before, it's sort of that texture. If you want the same crumbly texture as the other crusts, add filling as your first layer, then caramel.) Add a heaping tablespoon of filling, then drizzle more caramel on top. Split the remaining filling evenly between each cheesecake on top of the last caramel layer. Swirl with a toothpick, being careful not to dig into the crust. Try not to have any thick caramel swirls on the edges or top of your crust, which could cause your cheesecake to fall apart when you remove your cupcake wrappers.

14. Tap your muffin tins on the counter a few times to smooth out the tops of your cheesecakes. Bake cheesecakes for 17-23 minutes, or until the edges are set and the center is just slightly jiggly.

15. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes, then chill in the fridge for 2-3 hours.

16. For a fancier look, remove your cupcake wrappers before serving. Add any toppings you'd like after you remove the wrappers, and store covered in the fridge for up to 5 days (good luck getting them to last that long!).

Notes:

* Use your food processor to get these down to crumbs. 1 1/3 cup is approximately one sleeve of graham crackers plus 2 more full crackers.

** Lemon juice is definitely optional. If you don't like the flavor, just skip it. It won't ruin your cheesecakes and doesn't need to be replaced with anything.

*** Don't feel like you need name brand Nutella, or if you don't like the hazelnut flavor, you could replace with melted semi sweet chocolate with a little heavy cream in it to make it a bit creamier. If you just put cocoa powder in, it might end up a little sour.

**** If you don't already have salted caramel on hand (I mean, I assume everyone keeps a jar of caramel sauce on hand at all times, but I guess there might be some people who don't...?), it's pretty easy to make! I follow Sally's Baking Addiction's recipe, but I don't add any salt because I use salted butter. If you're making the caramel specifically for this recipe, let it cool for 20 minutes or so before you add it to your filling so it doesn't start to cook the filling unevenly before you're ready to bake.

Toppings: you don't necessarily NEED toppings on your cakes but it makes you feel extra fancy. I diced a few extra strawberries and threw a teaspoon of sugar on them, then let that sit in the fridge all day for the strawberry cheesecakes. I heated up more Nutella just a touch (like, 20 seconds in the microwave) to make it runnier, then piped it on top of the Nutella cheesecakes. For the salted caramel cheesecakes, I added more caramel on top, heating the caramel back up a little so it would pour nicely onto the cheesecake.

Making the crusts:

The left three in an "L" have been pressed down, right three need to be pressed still.

Filling Flavoring:

Top and bottom left: split the batter into four bowls; top three are still plain, bottom left has had the Nutella added. Bottom right shows approximate fill level pre-bake. You can tap your muffin tin on the counter a few times to try and smooth the tops a little before you bake! They'll keep the lumps if you don't, which doesn't affect the taste, but you may prefer a smoother look. It's pretty thick batter.

Caramel Cheesecakes:

Left picture: add some caramel to the bottom, then add a big tablespoon of plain filling on top of it. Middle picture: drizzle more caramel on top of your filling, then split what's left in your bowl across the six cheesecakes. Right picture: take a toothpick and swirl the caramel around, taking care not to dig into your crust while trying to remove wide streaks of caramel or any taking up a good amount of edge space.

After baking, make sure to cool them for at least 30 minutes on the counter so they won't sweat in your fridge. They should be in the fridge for at least 2 hours, but basically as long as you can wait until you're almost ready to serve, since adding toppings and removing wrappers should take about 10 minutes in total.

Toppings:

Really, you don't need to add any toppings if you don't want to. I just think it's fun, so I went ahead and added a few. If you use my method of chop strawberries, add sugar, and let sit in the fridge, make sure you don't bring too much of the sugary liquid with the berries when you put them on top. First, the cheesecake is definitely sweet enough already, and second, you don't want a slimey top texture and a soggy crust to develop if you top them and don't intent to eat them right that very same minute. The caramel helps distinguish the plain cheesecake from the caramel flavored one, since the swirls aren't super dramatic on every cheesecake. Clearly, my Nutella piping skills have some room for improvement, but hey, it was Valentine's Day yesterday. I have to put some hearts somewhere!

Let me know what flavors you come up with for this! The possibilities are pretty endless, just try not to add anything super liquid-y (or reduce the liquid if you can), and just aim to keep approximately the same texture from the original filling.