In order to create more of a variety, my sister and I made two types of cheesecakes - lemon topped with fresh fruit, and Nutella topped with whipped cream, chocolate chips, and crushed hazelnuts. Experiment with the flavors!
Lemon and Nutella Cheesecake Cupcakes
Ingredients:
- 3 (8 oz) packages of cream cheese
- 4 eggs
- 1 lemon
- about 1/2 cup of Nutella
- about 1 cup of sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- about 2 cups crushed cookies (you can use graham crackers for both cheesecakes, or you can do chocolate cookies like Oreos for the Nutella cheesecakes and lemon cookies for the lemon cheesecakes. In that case, do 1 cup lemon cookies and 1 cup Oreos)
- 1 stick butter
To Prepare the Crust
- Crush the cookies and pour them into a bowl. Mix in one melted tablespoon of butter at a time until the crumbs stick together slightly (if using Oreos, you'll need less butter)
- Line a cupcake or muffin tray with paper cupcake liners and spoon the cookie mixture into the liners. Press down on the mixture until the crust is firmly set in the bottom of the liner.
To Prepare the Lemon Cheesecake
- Using an electric beater (or a whisk) whip 1 1/2 packs of cream cheese in a bowl.
- Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and 3/4 cup sugar and whip again.
- Zest the whole lemon and juice half of the lemon into the cream cheese (watch out for seeds!). Whip once more. Add more lemon juice and sugar to taste
- Crack 2 eggs and whip them into the cheesecake mixture.
- Spoon the mixture into 12 of the cupcake liners.
To Prepare the Nutella Cheesecake
- Repeat the same process with the rest of the cream cheese, but stop after adding vanilla, because you might not need sugar (the Nutella is pretty sweet itself).
- Add the Nutella in spoon by spoon, mixing continuously until you get the desired depth of Nutella flavor in the cream cheese. If it isn't sweet enough, feel free to add more sugar or Nutella. We achieved a really rich and dense chocolatey texture by adding about half a cup of Nutella.
- Crack the remaining 2 eggs and beat them into the cream cheese mixture.
- Spoon this into the rest of the cupcake liners.
Bake the cupcakes at 350 degrees for about 30 min, then place in the fridge to cool. Right before serving, you can top the cheesecakes with garnish as mentioned in the description.
Other garnish options :
toasted coconut and pineapple chunks
roasted pecans and butterscotch chips
raspberry compote
different flavors of jam (marmalade, strawberry, blueberry)
chopped up peanut butter cups