These little bites of cheesecake are so cute. I actually don't like Oreos, but I love Cookies & Cream. Sounds strange, I know, but I was also one of those kids who hated tomatoes but loved ketchup and tomato sauce -- at least I grew out of that. These are from the new
Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book, and I love how the crust for each cheesecake is an entire Oreo.
It's so much easier to plop a cookie in each paper cup, rather than grind up graham crackers and press them into each cupcake well. They bake up really quickly, and everybody will love them. One word of advice: Read the entire recipe to make sure you have enough cupcake or muffin trays. It yields a lot of batter (I halved the recipe and used cupcake tins instead of muffin tins), and the cheesecakes need to refrigerate in the trays, so you can't remove the cakes immediately to bake up the rest of the batter.
Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes
42 cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.
With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.
Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.
Divide batter evenly among cookie-filled cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate (in tins) at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.
Enjoy them with a glass of milk!
