Cheesecake cupcakes

 

This past weekend was a roller coaster ride of emotions.  Up: Vin and I had our nice little romantic Valentine's Day outing; Down: he got a migraine. Up: we both decided we wanted to move back to the city and had a realtor come to check out our house; Down: the housing market is much worse than we thought and the only way we could sell the house is to take a huge, heart attack-inducing loss.  On the plus side, I'll still have a nice spacious kitchen to work in for a while...  but I AM trying to whittle down my possessions so we'll be ready to GTFO when the time comes.  Let's just hope I haven't lost my mind by then.  haha  Trying to part with my crap will probably be like pulling teeth, but getting back to Manhattan is motivation enough to pare down to the bare bones necessities: shoes, dresses, and (duh) baking supplies. 

Cherry-chocolate cream cheese cupcake!

Speaking of baking supplies, I need to buy more cupcake wrappers.  I had no idea I was going through so many so quickly, especially the mini ones.  I decided a couple weeks ago that I wanted to make little cheesecakes for Valentine's Day and discovered I'm running low on those little liners.  And I browsed the Interwebs for a legit cake cheesecake recipe but couldn't find one; searches for "cheesecake cupcakes" led me to miniature cheesecakes in cupcake liners.  Pppfffftttt.  I've made that before... good, basic, but nothing too special.  I wanted to achieve a legit airy cake-like consistency, not just make little cheesecakes, so I did what any mad scientist aspiring pastry chef would do: I made up my own recipe.

This is the first time I tried to concoct an entire recipe on my own.  My little cake dealer notebook (yes, I have a notebook that has "The Cake Dealer" and skulls and flowers printed on it, thank you very much, Vistaprint) now has a page full of scribbles and crazed writing with a recipe that I think actually works quite well.  I kept trying the batter and adding more of this and that and guessed how much flour I needed, and I may have a minor stomach ache from tasting too many raw eggs.  Or it could be from all the salty/fried crap I ate this weekend.  Anyway, even the baking time and temperature were part of my mad experiment, but I'm quite proud of my trial and error... actually, not too many errors; the cupcakes actually do have a light cake-like texture with cheesecake taste.  And they're not too sweet @ all, which is fine b/c they'll go perfectly with the fruit topping and not be overloaded with sugar.

I topped these mini cupcakes with cherry pie filling and felt extra creative and baked chocolate batter into some of the regular sized cupcakes. And of course it wouldn't be cheesecake without the graham cracker crust, so if you look closely at the bottom of the cupcake liners, that's not burned cake... it's the pièce de résistance.  =)

It's past 1 am and I need to get up in 4 hours.  I got a late start on my baking today and didn't have time to make gallons of frosting for what I hope to be is my greatest masterpiece... stay tuned for next week's dramatic episode of The Cake Dealer chronic-what-cles to find out how it goes!  hahaha

Happy <3 day!!!