Mini Cheesecake Bites

Connie, bless her heart, had done a bunch of baking for the freezer that helped so much in the day to day routine of the kitchen.  Rather than baking, say, a carrot cake from scratch on the day it was on the menu, we just pulled it out of the freezer, thawed it, and added fresh cream cheese icing.  Yuuummy!!

However, the stash of baked goods was now depleted and I needed to think of something quick and easy to go with yesterday’s Beef Stroganoff.

I discovered this little delicious treat with a little search on the internet.

Mini Cheesecake Bites (Yields: 48)

Ingredients:

50 vanilla wafer cookies

5 – 8 ounce packages cream cheese

1 3/4 cups plus 2 Tbsp. sugar

5 eggs

1/3 cup and 1 Tbsp. lemon juice

2 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cans (12 ounce) cherry pie filling

DIRECTIONS:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line 48 muffin cups with paper liners.

2.  Place a vanilla wafer in the bottom of each muffin cup.

3.  Beat cream cheese, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, and vanilla in a bowl (I used baby Hobart) until fluffy.  Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop mixture into the muffin cups, filling them about 1/2 way.

4.  Bake in the preheated oven until cheesecake filling is set, 15-20 minutes.  Let cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours.  Scoop cherry pie filling on the top and top with a dab of whipped cream right before serving.

The kids loved it!