I have a good friend Julie at my workplace, she is gluten intolerant so every week on cookie Monday she looks at my cookies that I bring and wishes she could have one. This week I converted a recipe to be gluten-free and I must say they are fantastic. If you don't put the cherries on top (I brought them in a separate container) you can pick them up with your hands and eat them. The extra cream cheese gives them a firm texture just right for picking up and eating. This is why I called them cookie bites.
I made the crust with Honey Grahams Gluten-Free by Pamela's These crackers are fantastic for a cheesecake crust. Another friend Wendy at work gave me this hint and I took her advice and used them.
The hardest part in making a cheesecake is getting the crust to taste just the way you want it to taste. I tried at first to make cookie cups from these crackers but I could not get them to hold the shape so I decided to bake it in a 8 X 8 square and see how it held up. I was more than happy with the results and hope you enjoy them.
The feature picture of these cookie bites is staged with this decorative spoon. Wouldn't this be a cute idea for a dessert dish? It would hold the cheesecake and cherries and each guest would get one. I purchased this at Hobby Lobby.
Cherry Cheesecake Cookie Bites
Barbara HallIngredients
CHEESECAKE FILLING
- 16 oz Cream Cheese 2 bars softened
- ½ cup Sugar white
- 2 Eggs
- ¼ cup Sour cream
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
CRUST
- 1 ½ cup Graham crackers 1 box crushed
- 1 ½ tablespoon Sugar white
- ⅓ cup Melted butter unsalted
TOPPING
- 1 can Cherry topping or filling
Instructions
CRUST
- Take an 8 X 8 or 8-½ X 8-½ dish that is oven safe and line the bottom and sides with tin foil and spray lightly with non-stick spray. Set the dish aside.
- I use a Breville Sous Chef Food Processor and pulse till all the graham crackers are in small crumbs. Add graham crumbs, sugar, and butter to a bowl and stir till the graham cracker crumbs are moist. Take the crumb mixture and place in the bottom of the baking pan. Press the moist graham cracker mixture around the tin foil so that it covers the whole bottom.
CHEESECAKE FILLING
- Preheat the oven to 325°.
- In a stand or hand-held mixer beat the cream cheese and sugar till it is smooth. Add in the sour cream and blend. I stop the mixer and scrape down the sides then add 1 egg and mix till it is incorporated, then add the 2nd egg and vanilla extract and blend. It will be runny. I take a spatula along the sides and bottom to make sure all the cream cheese is incorporated.
- Pour the cream cheese mixture onto the top of the graham cracker crumbs and smooth it out with a spoon.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. I pulled the dish out of the oven at 40 minutes and jiggled the baking dish the cream cheese mixture should not jiggle hardly at all. It should be pretty firm. The edges should just be a little brown.
- Let the baking pan cool and loosely cover with plastic wrap. I put in the refrigerator overnight. When you are ready to cut up the cheesecake grab the tin foil and lift the whole thing out of the baking pan and pull the tin foil off.
- Take a sharp knife and run under hot water (you need to do this a lot) and cut the cheesecake into as small of pieces as you want. I did 6 strips and 5 pieces a strip for 30 bite-size pieces of cheesecake that they can pick up and eat. I put the cherry topping in a separate bowl for people to add as much as they wanted to the top of the cheesecake.
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