Usually, for Christmas, homemade fudge and small vanilla bean sugar cookies with white chocolate icing are included on the tray. They look so festive and gorgeous in rows on this Wilton Armetale Acanthus large oval tray. (I love Armetale metal serving pieces!)
Mini Cherry Cheesecakes
Cherry Cheesecake Printable Recipe ◄ Pecan Tassies Printable Recipe ◄
The recipe for the cupcake-sized cheesecakes is from Paula Deen’s cookbook but I found that the regular size was a little awkward to eat. Taking her recipe and using mini cupcake liners, these make perfect miniature cheesecakes. These are one or two bites of delicious.
All the flavors come together at once, like a party in your mouth! No, you can’t eat just one… The other good part is that you won’t have red cherry sauce or cheesecake dripping down your chin! For that reason, they are also very good for small children.
Depending on the liners, regular-sized vanilla wafers or mini vanilla wafers can be used for the crust. Don’t know if you have noticed, but some of the mini cupcake liners have a smaller diameter at the base. The mini wafers fit much better in these.
My personal favorite liner is made by Reynolds and is silver – Reynolds® StayBrite® Baking Cups. They look particularly shiny and pretty on display. (Did you know they have generous coupons on their website? ►Reynolds Coupons
Did I tell you how easy these are to make? They seriously take very little time to stir up and bake! When the little cheesecakes bake, they rise and then fall just a bit right in the center, making a little indentation just the right size for a cherry or two and some sauce. After cooling, store them in a plastic container or a glass casserole dish covered with plastic or tin wrap in the fridge.
Recipe For Mini Cherry Cheesecakes
Mini Cherry Cheesecakes
Ingredients
- 2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- vanilla wafers *
- 1 can cherry pie filling
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Place a mini cupcake liner in each cup of the miniature muffin pan. Then, place a vanilla wafer FLAT side down, in each muffin cup.
Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each egg.
Spoon cream cheese mixture over wafers, filling each to about 1/4- inch from the top of the muffin cup. This makes about 36 mini cheesecakes.
Bake for about 14 minutes.
*The tops should not brown! Do not overbake!
Allow cheesecakes to cool completely before filling with the cherries. When the cheesecakes are removed from the oven, they will be puffed up, but as they cool, the center will sink, creating the perfect well to fill with one or two of the cherries from the filling.
Chill thoroughly before serving.
Notes
** Some mini muffin cup liners will accommodate the regularly sized vanilla wafers, but some of the liners will not. For the smallest ones, I use mini vanilla wafers. They are a perfect size. The smaller mini muffin liners will make 60 of the cheesecakes.
Make The Cherry Cheesecakes The Day Before
I usually make the cheesecake part the day or night before an event, leave them in the fridge overnight, and then add the cherries the next morning. Sometimes, one of the kids helps out with spooning the fruit into the little indentations on top of the mini cheesecakes.
The boys always request these at gatherings all year long! They look so festive in the fall and winter, for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter but they also look great for the Fourth of July events with the bright red cherries. A blueberry filling can be substituted for a cherry filling. It would be easy to make a red, white, and blue display with both cherry and blueberry fillings.
Pecan Tassies
The recipe for the pecan tassies is from a Southern Living book from several years ago. The unique part of this recipe is that the dough has cream cheese in it. The dough is much lighter and tastier than any other recipe, which I have found or tasted up to this point. In fact, I’ve had some that were downright clunky and the ratio of dough to filling was not good. If there is more dough than filling, the delicious filling is overpowered by the crust.
Tools For Mini Cherry Cheesecakes and Pecan Tassies
A mini tart shaper, which you can see in the picture above, works perfectly for pushing the dough down in the mini muffin cups. The mini tart shaper can be purchased from Pampered Chef for under ten bucks. As you can see, it works perfectly for cheesecake crusts, too.
You can find the Norpro mini cheesecake pan
◄ here at Amazon. (If you buy from this link, we may receive a small percentage of the purchase at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting this website!)
Pecan Tassies
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1 (8-oz.) package cream cheese, softened
- 2 – 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1-1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
- 1-1/2 cups chopped pecans
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Beat 1 cup butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add flour to butter mixture, beating at low speed. Shape mixture into 48 balls, and place on a baking sheet; cover and chill 1 hour.
Then, place 1 dough ball into each lightly greased muffin cup in mini muffin pans, shaping each into a shell.
Whisk together brown sugar and the next 5 ingredients. Spoon into tart shells.
Bake at 350° for 20 minutes or until filling is set. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove from pans; cool on wire racks for 20 minutes or until completely cool.
Notes
*You can easily half this recipe and make 24 tassies for a smaller crowd. **If you don't have four mini muffin pans, you can bake these in batches. Keep the extra dough chilled until you're ready to use it.
Once you make these tasty little morsels, you and your family won’t be able to resist these mini cherry cheesecakes and pecan tassies.
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