Mini Red Velvet Crust Cheesecakes

Isn’t food just better when its bite sized???

These are the perfect little cheesecakes for any occasion or event. I made these for a sorority event and everyone LOVED them! The recipe yields about 60 mini cheesecakes so they are perfect for large events when you need a lot of something. The great thing is that these turn out so cute but are actually easy to make! I have only ever made them in a mini cupcake pan, but you should be able to adapt them for a normal size muffin pan.

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Mini Red Velvet Cheesecakes

Ingredients:

• 3/4 Cup Unsalted Butter
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 2 Tablespoon Red Velvet Flavoring
• 3 1/4 Cups All- Purpose Flour
• 4 oz Cream Cheese (Room Temperature)
• 2 Cups Powdered Sugar
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

If you don’t want to prepare these from scratch, a standard sugar cookie mix, prepared as cutout cookies, will work as a crust. If I’m making from a mix, I like to add red velvet food flavoring and red food coloring. 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugars in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add eggs one at a time, and mix well after each addition.  Add Red Velvet Flavoring.
4. Add dry ingredients (baking powder, salt and flour). Mix well. Mixture should be a dough constancy, if the mixture is too sticky add flour until dough is workable.
5. Either line mini muffin pan with muffin papers or grease the pan. If you choose to grease the pan, you will need to grease it between each batch.
6. Roll cookie dough into a 1 inch ball for each cookie. Place balls of dough into muffin pan. Make a well or indentation into each ball of dough ( I use the rounded back-end of a whisk, but anything round could work). You will want the indentation to be large enough to fill with cheesecake filing later on.
7. Bake the cheesecake crusts until firm, about 10- 15 minutes. When you remove from the oven, you may need to reform the well/ indentation.
8. Remove from pan and allow cheesecake crusts to cool on a wire rack.

Filling:

1. Mix cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla in mixing bowl. Once combined fill a piping bag with the filling.
2. Pipe cream cheese filling into the center of each cooled cheesecake crust.  Refrigerate until ready to serve

* As an added step, I chose to melt some chocolate and drizzle it on a piece of wax paper. Once the chocolate hardened, I broke it apart and placed it on the top of the cheesecakes.