Banoffee Pie

I have something to share with you. I don't like bananas. As much as I try, I can't learn to love them. However, I dream about this dessert. Banana + toffee = banoffee.

Mini Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecakes

This past weekend was Thanksgiving here in Canada. I knew I wanted to make something with pumpkin (shocking I know) and when I saw the Share Your Sweets theme for this week was cheesecake, I knew pumpkin cheesecake was it. I had never made any kind of pumpkin cheesecake before so I went looking for the perfect recipe. Turns out I couldn't find one that had all of the things I was looking for so I mashed a bunch of them together and came up with my own. 

I'm dying to make a "real" cheesecake but there are two main things stopping me: 1) they're really expensive to make because most call for at least three packages of cream cheese, and 2) I try to share my treats with as many people as possible and walking to work with a whole cheesecake seems daunting. Therefore, I made minis. A quick note - I actually made 12 super huge minis. I wrote the recipe below for 16 to 18 because there was more than enough crust and filling to make more than 12.

Mini Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecakes
makes 16 to 18

For the crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar (brown or white)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter (measured after melting)

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and put 18 liners into your muffin tins.
• Mix together all ingredients and put about one tablespoon of crust mixture into each liner and pat down to compress.
• Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown.
• Let the crust cool a bit while making the filling.

 For the filling:

8 oz cream cheese (I used light)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2/3 cup of pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup caramel or dulce de leche

• Using a stand or hand mixer, combine cream cheese, sugar, maple syrup, and pumpkin puree until combined.
• Add the eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin pie spice.
• Fill prepared crust about 3/4 full.
• Add about one teaspoon of  caramel to the top of the filled crusts and swirl through the batter with a toothpick or skewer. 
• Bake at 350 degrees for 22 to 25 minutes until just slightly jiggly in the middle.
• Let cool on a rack and then refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. 

Crust

Batter

Dulce de leche from Costco - only $3.99! Find it near the peanut butter and jam

Adding the dulce de leche

After the swirl

Out of the oven

These were delicious. The crust was a bit too crunchy for my taste but otherwise, fantastic! I think that the crunchiness might have had something to do with the maple syrup and extra sugar in the crust. I haven't had anyone else taste test them yet but I anticipate they'll be a hit. These are a great alternative to pumpkin pie if you're not a huge fan. The texture is a bit firmer than pumpkin pie and I know that texture is an issue for some people. I'd never thought of combining pumpkin and caramel before but I'd certainly try it again.

Fellow Canadians, what did you have for dessert with your Thanksgiving dinner? 

Share Your Sweets: Fruit

The theme for this week's Share Your Sweets on Serious Eats is fruit. It just so happened that one of my very good friends was celebrating her birthday this weekend (happy birthday Kristen!) and I was going to attend her birthday party. I offered to bring something sweet and managed to  incorporate fruit into her tasty birthday treats. I know she loves lime so, after much back and forth, I decided to depart a little bit from my typical cupcake and I made mini lime cheesecakes with sour cream and raspberries. 

I started off with this recipe for key lime cheesecake pie from Kraft Canada. I kind of merged it with this recipe for coconut cream mini cheesecakes from the same site. They were my inspiration for the individual portions, sour cream topping, and I used it to figure out the baking time for the scaled down size. All in all the whole process was pretty simple. I started off with the crust (obviously). I had some ginger cookies kicking around in the cupboard so I threw some in the mini processor and added the cookie to replace about half of the graham crumbs in the crust. The recipe was very simple - 1 1/2 cups of cookie crumbs and 1/4 cup of melted butter. One slight mistake I made was adding 1/4 cup butter, melted instead of 1/4 cup of melted butter. Sounds minor but the mix came out a bit greasier than I would have anticipated.

One tablespoon of crumbs went into each cup. I portioned it out into 24 cups but I ended up only having enough filling for 20. If I were to make these again I would reduce to 18 cheesecakes and have a little more crust and filling for each one. I also doubled the amount of lime zest and juice that went into the batter. I generally find citrus recipes don't include enough to really be able to taste it so I always increase the amounts.

Out of the oven

The finished product

When I first tried one of these, I thought it was still a bit too tangy so I doubled the amount of sugar in the rest of the sour cream. I thought it helped a bit without making the dessert overly sweet. I thought they were quite delicious. Everyone at the party seemed to enjoy them. I would definitely make some other variation of these again. A good number of portions with minimal ingredients and they look great on the plate!

Are you a cheesecake fan? If so, what's your favorite flavor? If not, why?