In early May I flew across the country to attend my sister’s college graduation. On that red eye flight I watched the Food Network channel at an ungodly hour. Due to some combination of sleep deprivation, end of the week fatigue, and the airport bar, I have no clue what show I watched. However, the show did include a strawberry cheesecake.

In awaking from my blog hiatus (due to life’s craziness), I’ve been thinking a lot about cheesecake cupcakes. I’ve never really seen this done before. I looked around online and found many cupcakes made of cake dough or vanilla wafers but very few with cheesecake and graham crackers. Here is my recipe for cheesecake cupcakes. These turn out just like mini-cheesecakes, which is perfect for sharing!

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes 

For the cake: 

3  eight ounce packages of cream cheese
1 cup white sugar 
1 tsp vanilla 
3/4 cup milk 
3 eggs
3/4 cup sour cream

For the crust: 

1 and 1/2 packs of graham crackers
1 1/2 sticks of room temp butter

For the topping: 

about 1 cup of sour cream
3/4 cup white sugar

For the strawberry topping (puree) :

Large handful of diced strawberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon
sugar to taste and a Tbs of water.

Directions: 

For the crust: 

1) Preheat over to 350 degrees.

2) In a food processor blend crumbled graham crackers and butter to make a sticky dough.

3) Place the graham cracker crust at the bottom of the cupcake holders in a shape of a wafer.

4) Bake for about 5 minutes, the let cool in the oven.

Making the graham cracker cheesecake cupcake crust

For the cake:

1) Mix creamcheese using an electric mixer, then blend in 1 cup sugar

2) Blend in milk

3) One-by-one mix in eggs

4) Add sour cream and vanilla and 3 Tbs flour

5) Scoop into the cupcake tin. About 2 Tbs of dough per cupcake.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until the tops become light golden brown.

For the Toppings: 

1) While the cupcakes bake, make the toppings. Dice strawberries and add some sugar to bring out the juices.

2) Mix together the sour cream (about 1 cup) and 3/4 cup sugar.

3) Using a blender/immersion blender mix together a handful of strawberries, 1/2 juice of lemon, sugar to taste and enough water to make the syrup runny. On my second batch, I also lightly stirred in the strawberry syrup into the batter

Once the cupcakes are out:

Spoon 1 Tbs of sourcream frosting followed by the strawberry syrup design and top with a strawberry slice.

I’m starting to think cheesecake cupcakes are so rare because of the double wordage. Perhaps people have shied away just because it is awkward to say?  Regardless of the English language, these turned out quite tasty and now I have an alternative to baking an entire cake and hoarding it in my fridge for breakfast, don’t judge.