My dear friend Cindy took a picture of the final product under less-than-optimum circumstances in the low light of the wedding reception. Thank you, Cindy! As usual I wasn’t prepared to take pictures and had left my camera in the car.
I made these for the daughter of a dear friend, and I have to say that they were very successful. Every single one of the 96 I made disappeared, and I got lots of compliments. Can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re not very hard and can be made in advance and frozen excluding the strawberries and glaze. The actual filling is a very basic plain cheesecake mixture; the toppings make them special. You can do even more with decorating them if you want to.
STRAWBERRY-CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKES
Adapted from a recipe in Family Circle Magazine a number of years ago. I made 96 of them. What I'm giving below will make 24, so you'll need 2 12-cup muffin tins.
Ingredients
Graham cracker crust:
- 10 full sheets chocolate graham crackers So that's 20 squares, two for each full sheet.
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 6 tablespoon melted butter
Cheesecake mixture:
- 16 ounces cream cheese
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 tsp . orange zest or 1/8 tsp. orange oil
- 1 tsp . vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/4 tsp . salt
Strawberry/sour cream layer:
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup strawberry jam
Strawberry/glaze layer:
- 1/2 cup (approx.) strained and slightly heated strawberry jam
- 24 small halved or larger sliced strawberries
White chocolate glaze:
- 4 oz. white chocolate
- 2 oz. (1/2 stick) butter
- 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons milk
Instructions
Graham cracker crust layer:
-
Grind up graham crackers in your food processor with 1/3 cup sugar. (If you don't have a food processor, you can crush them in a plastic bag with a rolling pin and then mix in the other ingredients by hand.) You should end up with about 1 1/2 cups of crumbs. Then pour 6 tablespoons of melted butter through the feed tube of your processor as it's running. You'll need to then scrape the bottom of the fp bowl with a spatula to get it evenly mixed, but that's basically it. Use a heaping tablespoon for each muffin cup. Press the crumbs down with your fingers and then use a small flat-bottomed measuring cup (probably the 1/4 cup size) to even it out completely.
Cheesecake layer:
-
Beat the cream cheese until smooth, then add sugar and blend well. Beat in sour cream, then add eggs one at a time, mixing each one in before adding the next. Add flavorings and flour, mixing until smooth. You can do this in your food processor or with a hand mixer.
-
Scoop about 1/4 cup into each muffin cup. Be sure not to overfill, as you want to have room for the topping. You will probably have some batter left over, so you could make a little additional cheesecake if you'd like. That's what I did. You want the batter to come up only to no more than 1/8 inch below the top of the liners.
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Bake at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes, up to 20. The original recipe said to bake for 35 minutes! This, my friends, is insane. I believe that I baked mine for about 18 minutes. The best way to test is with an instant-read thermometer. As soon as the temp reaches 160, you're good to go. Mine actually got over that, to around 170, but I don't think they were overbaked. I never got to eat one, so I don't know for sure, but everyone else seemed to like them.
Strawberry/sour cream layer:
-
Mix together the 1 cup sour cream and 1/2 cup strawberry jam. Let the baked cheesecakes cool a bit so that they sink, then spread about a tablespoon on each one. The mixture will be fairly thin and will spread out. Put back into the oven for five minutes, let cool again, then chill.
Strawberry/glaze layer:
-
The nicest way to do this is to have small perfect strawberries that you cut in half and put a cut-side-down half on each cupcake. Alas, we do not live in a perfect world. So you'll probably end up using those huge grocery-store strawberries and having to cut slices, as I did, and they won't match. C'est la vie! Melt some strawberry jam in the microwave (maybe 30 seconds or so for 1/2 cup) and brush that over each strawberry. .
White chocolate glaze layer:
-
Melt chocolate and butter together in the microwave (do 1 minute at 50% power, check and stir, do additional 30-second increments until smooth, and be careful not to scorch), then mix in the sugar and add enough milk to make it thin enough to drizzle. You can just use a fork to drip the glaze. I have a little icing gun that worked well. The glaze will harden somewhat
Recipe Notes
And there you have it. It sounds like a lot of steps, and it is, but each one is pretty easy. I would say that of all the cupcakes I make these are probably the most popular. I've now made them for three weddings. And if you like raspberries better than strawberries, that's good, too. (Actually better, in my opinion, but the bride wanted strawberries, and that was perfectly fine.)
