A little dessert

Phil and I are both on the Friends of the Library Board.  Last week, we held an event honoring those who donated money to the library.  We have done this for four years in a row now and every year we do a different theme.  This year's them was "Reading and Recipes", and most of our recipes were taken from books found in the library.  I volunteered to bring three recipes to go on the "Cookbooks" table.  One would think this would be easy.  Grab a cookbook and pick a recipe, right?  But I have a problem.  I love to read cookbooks and cooking magazines, but actually following a recipe is really hard for me. If I'm looking for a certain recipe, I look online.   I view cookbooks as more of a resource or a starting point.  I get ideas for what to make from the cookbooks and then usually go make up my own recipe.

After a lot of thought, I decided on three items.  I made deviled eggs (we have an abundance of eggs), vegetable pizza and mini cheesecakes.  I had a whole cookbook on deviled eggs and actually managed to follow a recipe for those.  Well, some of them.  I decided to freestyle a little and made up my own recipe for about half of them.  The veggie pizza was a result of a little research and experimentation and the cheesecake recipe was a combination of a few different recipes.  I wasn't going to write about any of these but the cheesecakes looked so pretty on the platter, I just had to share them.  With the holidays coming up, these might be a great treat to bring with you to dinner parties. 

Easy Mini Cheesecakes (Makes 48 mini muffin cups or 12 big muffin cups)
Crust:  oreos or mini oreos, depending on what size you are making (could also use vanilla wafers, or whatever your favorite cookie is)
2 bricks cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.  Put liners in muffin cups.  Put one oreo or mini oreo in each cup and crush with a spoon. (You could also crush them in a food processor first then put them in the cups.)  Blend together cream cheese, vanilla and sugar.  Make sure you use a mixer and blend well, otherwise the cheesecakes will have chunks.  Mix in eggs until just combined.  You could also stir in some mini chocolate chips at this point.  Pour over the oreo crumbs.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on the size, until just set. 

When cooled, top with chocolate chips or fruit.  I looked for fresh berries for the garnish, but they are out of season so had to settle for kiwi.  They turned out delicious anyway.  Make sure you store them in the refrigerator.