Mini Fireball Gingerbread Cheesecakes

These are fantastic little treats for the holiday season with an adult alcoholic twist. Now if you’re looking for some kid friendly gingerbread cheesecakes,  I’ve added notes down below on how to adapt these. Last Christmas, I chose to make one batch for the adults and one for the kids-I just make sure to distinguish between the two (I used different colored cupcake papers or little gingerbread sugar candies on top!)

This recipe is also great because it’s quick and easy to make and would be pretty hard to mess up.

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Mini Fireball Gingerbread Cheesecakes

Ingredients:

• 1 Box Gingerbread Cookie Dough Mix
• 4-oz cream cheese (room temperature)
• 2-1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1-teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 Tbsp. Fireball Whisky
• ¼ cup flour

Directions:

Cookie Cups:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place mini cupcake papers in each of a 24 mini muffin cup pan or grease each mini muffin cup.
2. Follow directions on box to make gingerbread dough. Add flour to the cookie mixture so that dough will be a little firmer and will bake up with less puff.
3. Roll two teaspoons of cookie dough into a ball for each cookie. Place balls of dough into paper liners mini cupcake/muffin pan. Make an indentation into each ball of dough. I used the back of a whisk that looked like a good size indent.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until cookie looks done. The edges should be slightly brown and the cookie should be firm to touch.
5. Let cups cool before removing from cupcake pan. If the cookie did puff up at all, using something round push the centers back down.
6. To speed up cooling if you’re in a rush, place the pan in the refrigerator for a few minutes.

Filling:

1. In a bowl, beat room temperature cream cheese and confectioners sugar. Stir in vanilla.
2. Before piping in the filling, I like to add 2-3 drops of Fireball Whisky into each cup. It makes the flavor stronger. How much you add is really up to you, but it shouldn’t be more than the cookie will absorb on its own.
3. Place filling into a piping bag, or if you don’t have one, a plastic Ziplock sandwich bag, and cut off the tip edge of bag. Pipe one teaspoon or so of filling into each area of cookie dough. If you plan on stacking these to transport, I recommend trying not to fill the centers up past the edges, they are easier to stack if they stay level.

*If you don’t want to add the fireball whisky, you can omit and only add in 2 cups of confectioners sugar instead of 2 1/2 cups. 

 Yields about 48.