Sometimes making a whole cheesecake can be daunting. I wanted to make a strawberry cheesecake for a friend who was graduating, but honestly didn’t have the time to bake a full-size cheesecake since the one I made last year took what felt like forever to bake. I mean, it was delicious and looked beautiful but I didn’t have that kind of time. I searched for a mini cheesecake recipe online and saw this recipe from Chelsweets and since I follow them on Instagram I was excited to give it a try.

I really like all of the substitutions and swaps notes here since sometimes recipes can be very vague and sometimes the little details make a huge difference. I chose to make my own graham crackers using a food processor since I usually have those in the pantry. We don’t own a mini cheesecake pan (though now I’m seriously considering buying one since the ones of the website looked so pretty), so I used a regular muffin pan with liners. I felt like it worked really well and the liners came off fairly easily once you’re ready to display/eat.

Once you’ve got the graham cracker crust done it’s time to move on to the filling; which is simple. Just be sure to follow the instructions and scrape the bowl a lot since cream cheese has a tendency to cake up on the sides of the bowl. My cheese cakes needed a little more time than what’s listed on the recipe so just keep an eye on it until you notice the tops are set.

The strawberry sauce is easy as well; the hardest part here is just dicing all of the strawberries. You might notice there’s no sugar in the sauce and I really felt like that made these taste more like an actual strawberry and since the cheesecakes themselves are sweet it complimented it nicely. I saved a few of the nicer looking strawberries to use as garnish and these looked so pretty amongst the rest of the spread of delicious food served. If you want cheesecake without all of the time involved this is the next best thing! These were easy, fairly quick, beautiful looking, and delicious; a win in my book!

Recipe Used: Chelsweets