Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Baby Berry Cheesecakes

Bite size cakes and bakes have been cropping up on some of my favourite blogger websites recently, including my friend Like Mam Used To Bake, telly god Donal Skehan and the lovely An American in Ireland.  So I really wanted to make some myself over the Bank Holiday weekend.  When I mentioned it to my work colleague Peggy (she knows who she is), she roared "I don't want one mini one, I want FIVE of them".  So that was me told...  I had bought a packet of dried blueberries in M&S a few days ago and they were begging to go into something sweet.  Combine them with some beautiful Irish strawberries and it just had to be cheesecake.

As I work in an office, it's much easier to make individual servings of anything I bake - this means it's ready and waiting for the hungry hordes, which is why you'll see a lot of traybake-style photos on my blog.  I just cut them up, put them into The Tin of Happiness and head to work.  As these cheesecakes should be kept cold, I put The Tin into the fridge & forgot about it.  The first baby cheesecake vanished at 11am as it disappeared into somebody's office at top speed.  This person didn't share the location of the tin with their colleagues.  It's always the small, quiet ones you have to watch!

One thing I did discover when making these Baby Berry Cheesecakes is that the cases do stick to the tins after you bake the bases.  So... free the paper cases from the tin before you add the cheesecake filling to the crunchy biscuit base.  It will save you a lot of frustration & swear words later on.  On the upside, myself & The Hubs got to eat all the ones that didn't emerge from the muffin tins perfectly...  This quantity makes 24, so just halve the recipe if you only want to make a small batch.


Baby Berry Cheesecakes

120g Digestive Biscuits
120g Ginger Nut biscuits
120g Butter
300g Cream Cheese
120g Icing Sugar
180ml Cream
300g Strawberries
100g Dried Blueberries


Preheat your oven to 180c/Gas Mark 4.  Line 2 x 12-hole muffin cases with paper cases.


Crush your biscuits - as ginger nuts are fairly dense, it's probably easier to blitz them in a food processor.


Melt the butter gently, add the crushed biscuits & mix well.

 

Spoon about a tablespoon of the mixture into each paper case, flatten down with a spoon & bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven & allow to cool while you prepare the filling.


Puree the strawberries and blueberries together & leave to one side.


Mix the cream cheese & icing sugar together.


Whisk the cream until very thick.



Now gently fold the cream cheese mix, cream and fruit together until well combined and spoon into the paper cases.  I used an ice-cream scoop for this as it is relatively mess-free.


Chill the baby berry cheesecakes in the fridge for as long as possible to allow them to firm up.  4 hours minimum, overnight is even better...

6 comments:

  1. Firstly, am jealous of the cleanliness of the inside of your oven! Another lovely recipe, Aoife, to add to my already groaning list.

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  2. That's my gorgeous self-cleaning Bosch posh oven... the old one didn't look remotely like that!!!

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  3. I literally licked my lips looking at those lahhhvely photos.

    They look DeeLish!

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  4. Yummy delish nomzers!!! I love mini cakes, no guilt! :)

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  5. Ooh, perfect! Love the berry/ginger combo idea. And your cake stand. :)

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