Chocolate Chip Baking Week 5: Chocolate Chip Mini Cheesecakes

These gorgeous babies were included in this baking week as vying for a part in the ‘Most Creative Use Of Chocolate Chip Cookie/Dough’. No, they did not win at all, beating the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes was a hard call but I do believe next time I make them, things might get a little heated between the two – and I assure you there will be a next time 🙂

The only real contribution made concerning chocolate chip cookies or their dough when I made this was really only crushing up the Mrs Field’s version of my first chocolate chip cookie tried (the last remaining after my brother and his mates happily polished off the rest :P) in the crust and adding chocolate chips into the batter, as the name suggests.

Next time, I plan to use eggless chocolate chip cookie dough and chop it up, putting chunks into the batter. I think bites of half baked cookie dough could really go well with the delicious taste of creamy, smooth cheesecake. I will also add half caster and half brown sugar into the cheesecake batter for a deeper sweetness 🙂
Then, we will really see who the winner is…

This cheesecake recipe from the fabulous Baking Bites has forever got me sold on mini cheesecakes – why are they so great?

1. No cracks, no water baths, no hassle – just pop them in muffin liners and you are all set to go
2. Lack of baking time – honestly, waiting an hour for the cheesecake (if not more), an hour of cooling and overnight refrigeration is truly too long to wait for the smooth and creamy dream of a dessert
3. You can eat two and not feel guilty (I only ate one – on my honour – though I was sorely tempted) since they are bite size portions LITERALLY
4. You can make one huge batch of batter, divide it and then use a variety of different flavourings in each mini cheesecake, essentially giving you literally 6-12 different cheesecakes 🙂
5. There is no pain in cutting and serving and crusts getting stuck to the springform tin – just pop it on a plate and serve

See? 5 SOLID reasons I never wish to make a fully blown, 20cm cheesecake again – I truly must make more cheesecake soon otherwise I will explode…

The taste of this cheesecake was simply creamy and dreamy – tasted like a classic New York Cheesecake with its subtle sour cream base. It was simply perfect. And since the recipe was perfect I had some fun with it…

For the crust, I did not wish to open a whole packet of plain Arnott’s biscuits for 1/4 of the recipe (only my Baba and I enjoy cheesecake, the rest of my family is a little ‘meh’ about them, though Daddy stole a nice bite from me!) so I improvised. In my pantry were:

• 1 Mrs Fields Version Chocolate Chip Cookie
• 1 Shortbread mini cookie from my Stain Glass Window Cookies
• A couple of Indian Tea Biscuits (which are very similar to the ultra famous, delicious Parle-G) – I didn’t actually need these so I ate the leftover crust crushed biscuits – talk about delicious!

I crumbled these together, added some butter, ignored the brown sugar and got one of the tastiest cheesecake crusts I have ever come across – who needs a single type of cookie ay?

Besides this, here are my adaptations and tips on this recipe:

• Next time, I will definitely use mini chocolate chips, not the large baking chips cadbury has released (which while flavoursome, are a right pain to cut up) – since they were so big, you basically divided your cheesecake bite according to the hard lumps of chocolate sitting on the bottom of the batter
• I used chocolate rocks in my batter instead of chocolate chips to add a bit of pizzazz
• Specifically used milk chocolate chips
• My cheesecake was baked in 15 minutes as opposed to the 25 minutes recommended – keep an eye on these babies!

I also had a specific cooling process to aid in stopping deflation (also cracks but they would not have occurred anyway in minis)

1. Let cool in cooling oven with the door slightly ajar for 10-15 minutes
2. Transfer muffin liner tray to a wire rack and let cool in tray for 10-15 minutes]
3. Take out of liners and let cool completely
4. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours before removing liners and serving with additional sauces etc.

Did these win? Not yet. Would I make them again? Hell yes.

Cheers till tomorrow, which brings a very special Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream to the spotlight… 🙂