Cheese cupcakes

I first fell in love with cheesecake years ago when I tried out (for fun) this recipe on Allrecipes called Chantal's New York Cheesecake. It took some time to make (and get right) but the final product was incredibly delicious. My daughter likes it too, and over the years often begged me to make it, which I seldom acquiesced because it takes some work, quite some cost and most of all, lots of TIME to complete (including leaving it to cool in the oven for at least FIVE hours and THEN chilling overnight in the fridge, ye gods).

A slice of New York Cheesecake

Then recently, I came across a recipe that made mini-cupcakes out of cheesecakes. It seemed so easy - just beat, pour and bake. Really? I had to try. The result of that recipe was passable cheese cupcakes (I didn't have mini muffin pans at that time) that were a tad hard and dry. However, it was fast to make, lower in cost (only half a kilo of cream cheese whereas a whole 9 inch cake required 1 kg at one go, that's not cheap!) and simple to complete, which meant I could do up a batch easily anytime we wanted a cheesecake fix. Best of all, I can double the recipe or halve it to my requirements. I wanted my cake and eat it! (Oh dear, this last sentence was bad grammar but I'm too sleepy to figure the right structure out).

I brought out my trusty Chantal's recipe to compare and decided to give it another go, this time using the ingredients ratio for Chantal's recipe but baking it the cupcakes way. The results? I don't think I've ever made more delectable cupcakes or cheesecakes in my life.

Cheese cupcakes

In the pic above, two cakes are topped with some chopped strawberries that have been mixed with sugar, and the others  are just topped with grated dark chocolate. A few members of my family prefer another topping - strawberries mixed with passionfruit.

And here are some I made for a family friend's birthday. All topped with only the strawberry-sugar mixture (ran out of dark choc).