Mini Cheesecakes

These bite-sized delights are easy to make, take about 1/3 of the baking time of a full-sized cheesecake, and freeze well.

Start with paper liners in a mini-muffin pan.

The chocolate crusts in mine are these lo-cal Oreo snacks.

From there, mix a batch of your favorite cheesecake batter. This one is:

3 packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened

¾ cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

3 eggs

(Add 1/4 cup cocoa if you want chocolate cheesecakes.)

Combine cream cheese, sugar, cocoa and vanilla.

Mix until blended.

Add eggs, one at a time mixing well.

Spoon filling over crusts.

Bake at 325 º for 20 minutes.

I used a #60 food scoop (capacity - about 1 tablespoon) to fill each cup neatly.

After the cheesecakes cool, they'll freeze for up to 3 months. Top them when cool (or thawed). I topped these with a little Nutella.

NOTE: For this year's Tea Party, I used 5 cream cheese, 1.25 c sugar, 3.5 tsp. vanilla, 5 eggs. Yield: 107 cheesecakes.