Goat Cheese Mini Cheesecake

Once, many years ago now, I went on a double date with a boy from high school and a couple of his friends.  I did not know his friends and they were older than me so I was quite nervous.  We did some activity, I have no idea what anymore, and then we went for pizza.  The girl was a vegetarian and so we ended up ordering a Mediterranean type pizza with lots of veggies and feta cheese.

The pizza came, we ate, we chatted, altogether it was a pleasant evening.  When the time came to pay the check and the leftover pizza was in its box.  The girl commented that she was going to have to hide the pizza in the refrigerator so that her family would not eat it because she thought is so delicious she wanted the leftovers for herself.  And then I felt the need to open my mouth.  I said "Well, you should just tell them it has goat cheese on it and then they will stay away." 

The three people at the table looked at me for a moment and then the girl finally said.  "Heather, feta is goat cheese."

Awesome.  Such an embarrassing moment in my young adolescent life.  Obviously since then I have come to know and love goat cheese dearly.  My husband and I ate at a nice restaurant for our anniversary this past year.  For dessert, the menu offered goat cheese cheesecake.  We decided to try it, as my husband loves cheesecake.  It was AMAZING.  Cool and creamy but tangy and sweet.

I saw that Tartelette had a recipe for mini goat cheese cheesecakes and I had to try it.  Mini cheesecakes are great because you only need to bake them for 20 minutes and they are already individually portioned.  A full size cheese cake is a multi hour endeavor that I rarely manage to plan for.  You should should check out Tartelette's post too, she has stunning photos, a recipe for gluten free crust, and a blood orange sauce I ran out of time to make.  And I typically like my cheesecake unadorned anyway, maybe a bit of fruit on the side.

Goat Cheese Mini Cheesecake adapted from Tartelette
          makes 12-15 standard sized cupcakes
Filling

• 8 ounces soft goat cheese
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 3 large eggs
• juice and zest from one lemon
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

Beat together the goat cheese and cream cheese until smooth.  Add granulated sugar and beat until incorporated.  Remember to beat the cream cheese mixture until completely  smooth, once the eggs are added the lumps won't beat out and cream cheese does not melt in the oven.

Beat eggs in one at a time, scraping the bowl after each egg.  Add the zest and juice from the lemon and beat until incorporated.

Crust from the Keebler Graham Cracker box

• 1 1/4 cups Graham cracker crumbs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

Whisk together Graham cracker crumbs and sugar.  Pour in melted butter and stir together.  Press into the bottom of greased muffin tins. Its actually a good idea to grease both the inside of your muffin pan and the muffin papers themselves.  Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5-6 minutes.  Allow to cool.

Once the crusts are cool, pour the filling in the muffin tins until about 3/4 full.  Cheesecake doesn't raise much, but it does puff up a bit.  Bake at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes.  You want to pull them out of the oven when they are still a bit jiggly.  A friend of mine told me that the cheesecake should wiggle as one unit when you get it out of the oven instead of having many ripples when moved like when it's put in the oven.  I found a water bath unnecessary but to be on the safe side you can use one.  Just fill a pan larger then your muffin pan with about an inch of water.  Allow to cool.

Mini Cheesecakes

I made these mini cheesecakes for my sister's bridal shower last weekend.  They tasted fantastic and went over really well.  They were the perfect size and nice and creamy.  I was skeptical about making cheesecakes in muffin tins, because I always have anxiety over regular cheesecake (is it done, is it overdone, is it too wiggly still?)  These, however, were really easy and they did not take very long to bake at all.  The two hour baking time is another drawback of regular cheesecake.

I found the recipe in a wedding magazine from Martha Stewart, however it is also on her website here.  The hearts were such a cute addition and so easy.  All that was done, was drop some raspberry puree onto the top prior to baking and drag a toothpick through the middle.  The most difficult part was straining all of the seeds out of the raspberry puree!

These cheesecakes did not bake these in a water bath and I did not run into any difficulties, however, I did fill some of the tins too full of batter and it puffed up and cracked.  It is best to keep the tins only about 2/3 full.  Also, this leads to the best ratio of crust to cheesecake.  Another thing to note, as with all cheesecake, cream cheese does not melt so it is imperative to have the cream cheese at room temperature to be able to successfully beat all of the lumps out of it.

For practice the week before, I decided to try Taretlette's goat cheese cheesecakes.  These too were phenomenal.  The earthy flavor of the goat cheese was just the right compliment to the sweetness of the cheesecake.  I had been looking for a goat cheese cheesecake recipe ever since I tried it at The Turf Room, a restaurant my husband and I ate at for our anniversary a year ago.  This one really hit the spot.  Blood oranges are not available in my area, so we just ate them naked.  I ran into a bit of trouble with the muffin papers sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Tartelette specifically mentions spraying the pan before putting the muffin papers in, however, I failed to follow these directions.  The mistake was corrected when I made the above cheesecakes and had no problems pulling them out of the pan.

Overall, mini cheesecakes always seem to be a hit and are defiantly going to be made again.