Mini Oreo Cheesecakes

I am unabashedly fond of Oreos. I love them. And they love me. And they are particularly good as the crusts of these mini cheesecakes. If this recipe sounds somewhat similar to another I posted on this blog... it is. These are even better than I remember. And easier than I remember. Holla at easy and delicious cheese cake!

Mini Cheese Cakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes.

Here's what you need:

2 lbs cream cheese (I used two packages of Philadelphia and two store brand)

1 C sugar

4 eggs at room temp, lightly whisked

1 C sour cream 

1 t vanilla

1 dash of salt

2 Packages of Oreos. Crush up about 12 Oreos, use 36 more as crusts, and then you still have left overs to dip in milk after all the cheesecakes are gone. 

Here's what you do:

Preheat your oven to 275. Put paper cups in your cupcake pan. Pop an Oreo in the bottom of each.

Mix up the cream cheese for a few minutes and then add the sugar. Scrape the sides of the bowl and add the sour cream, then the eggs and vanilla. Toss in your dash of salt. Then hand stir in the crushed up Oreos. I like some bigger chunks in my cakes, so I just chopped them coarsely.

Bake for 22 minutes, then let them cool on a wire rack. Then put the whole pan in the fridge for four hours. They're worth the wait.

Pre-Halloweening Mini Cheesecakes

Is it just me, or did all things Halloween seem to begin on October 1st? Target and Old Navy are full of fun stuff, and I have to admit that for the first time in a while, I'm actually pretty excited about All Hallows Eve. So naturally I started by trying a new recipe. Cookies and cream cheesecakes made Halloween style with special edition black and orange Oreos.

I used a whole Oreo as the base for the mini cheesecakes. The Oreos have cats, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns on them. Check out the awesome orange layer under the cake. (I wanted to type "bootiful" just now. I'm really glad I didn't.)

Oh Martha.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes. Sounds good, right?

So yesterday my husband, Lito, was like, Heeyyy.... you haven't made cupcakes for a while...and the guys at work have heard a lot about how awesome they are.... The gauntlet was thrown. Cupcakes had to be made. So I sent a list of possible cupcake flavors I'd like to try, including PBChocolate, and that, my friends is what I made.

I returned to my perfect-bound Martha Stewart cookbook and flipped through to the loveliest picture of warm, perfect cupcakes. And I made the recipe. Here they are with frosting:

Bah.

So, here I am, expecting to be able to post on the magnificent maiden voyage of the kitchenaid mixer, and it was lovely, truly, so I should post on that, but instead, I'm going to tell you about some really lovely pretty cupcakes that didn't taste that great. That's right. They were okay. And maybe it should be preceded by the following caveat: I have no baking/culinary training whatsoever, other than what I've picked up along my quest to eat delicious desserts.

See? Aren't they pretty? The frosting tasted (tastes) fantastic BTW, but I knew it would -- butter cream frosting always tastes good.

So I tried Martha Stewart's buttermilk cupcake recipe. Yep, I'm calling out the queen of all things domestic and lovely. But here's the deal: other people have tried this recipe and liked it, so, ya know, maybe don't write her off entirely. Maybe just think before you make these particular cupcakes.
It looks like a Ferris Wheel of delicious cake.

So here's the scoop: the recipe, first of all, said that it yielded 36 cupcakes. When I made it, I came out with over 48, for a family of two, that is way too effing many cupcakes. Even for me.

Second of all, the cake wasn't dry. But it wasn't moist either. Someone explain to me how a cake that calls for EIGHT eggs (five whole and three additional yolks) can not taste like a dreamy dream loaf? Perhaps the eggs were the problem. The cake was dense but kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. Irritating.

But absolutely lovely. No?