I had the opportunity to go berry picking the other day and it reminded me of this great recipe I have for mini-cheesecakes. I made these for my birthday last year and to celebrate President Obama’s inauguration. Since it was the middle of winter, I used canned cherry pie filling and some imported blueberries. Don’t they look good?
Here’s the recipe:
Mini Cheesecakes
2 large packages of cream cheese (I use low-fat)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I use real, not imitation)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix ingredients with an electric hand mixer until the batter is smooth. Line a muffin tin with paper muffin cups. Place 1 vanilla wafer cookie in each cup and fill 2/3 full with filling. Bake 20 minutes. Let cool.
For topping the cooled cheesecakes, you can either use canned cherry pie filling or if you want to take advantage of all the delicious ripe summer berries, you can stir them together with a fruit glaze or even a little jelly (something to make the berries adhere to the cheesecake and help sweeten them up a bit if they’re too tart). I think the blueberries and raspberries I picked the other day would have been perfect for a dessert like this. Of course, that is if I hadn’t eaten them all! :)
