I felt like cheesecake last night but making a 10" cheesecake wasn't an option. First of all, I would eat it. Secondly, I would eat it. Actually, what really got me thinking about scaling down the recipe was I have been obsessed with developing a tasting menu at home. I love the idea of being able to have "tastes" of several different kinds of dishes without feeling like you ate the world. When I wasn't having much luck with that, I moved on to recipes that I could scale down....which brought me to cheesecake. I don't see the clear connection anymore....but still, it worked.
I tossed around the idea of adapting my other cheesecake recipe to be the size of cupcakes. I must remind everyone that I do not adapt anything. I follow the recipe and especially when I am baking. But I mostly wanted to see if it could be done while retaining the lightness and integrity of the original texture/taste etc.
The picture really doesn't do justice to how totally yummy this cheesecake actually is...but I was in a hurry to get the results on the blog, so what you end up with is a sub-par picture. It really doesn't matter, because these are so tasty it's fine if the picture is bad.
Here is how I adapted the recipe...I made the crust the same except I melted the butter and pulsed the graham crackers, sugar and melted butter in the food processor together. I lined muffin tins with the little cupcake papers (do these actually have a name?) and put about a tablespoon or so of crust in each one and tamped it down with a shot glass, then I baked them for 3 minutes to set the crust. I really don't think I needed to do that step, but I figured I would at least mention that I did. I made the filling as per the original recipe (follow the link above) and filled the little paper thingies to within about 1/4 or a touch less from the top (remember that there is a topping you bake quickly later). I baked them at 375 which was the regular temp for 13 minutes. I played around with 12, 13 and 14 minutes. 12 minutes I couldn't tell if they were done or not. 13 seemed good...and 14 overcooked some while others looked fine. Remember that you don't want them to crack (which is what happened at 14 minutes). I cooled them per the recipe and then added the sour cream topping to fill the rest of the cupcake paper thing, baked for 3 minutes and let set overnight in the refrigerator, (after cooling completely).
I strained some raspberries for the sauce but seriously, I am very pleased with how these came out. It was sketchy there for a minute or so. I may even try and adapt more recipes!
