Have you ever been super late with a present?

Like, maybe you had it ready on time to give it to the person, but you didn’t actually take the final step of getting it to them?

Yeah…that happened to me recently.  Last weekend I finally got some friends their Christmas present.  Only a few months late, right? >.>

I’d been planning on giving them some baked goods since before Christmas; in fact, I actually had them baked (seriously!).  But then I waited too long and they got all stale and gross…so…yeah. >.>  I don’t think this whiny list of excuses really does me any good…I’m just sayin’, you know?

*shifts awkwardly*

ANYhoo, thanks to Adam and Emily for being so forgiving over my super-late present…and I’m glad ya’ll liked it, even if they weren’t the prettiest things ever.  And thanks for letting me taste one to boot. ^_^

As the blog title states, the treats I made for them were Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes.  I mentioned a long time ago that I’d purchased a magazine from Junior’s cheesecake restaurant in which they give you all sorts of cheesecake recipes, including some for their signature “Little Fellas”, or cheesecake cupcakes.  They’re significantly less intensive then the whole cheesecake recipes offered in the magazine, so I thought I’d go with the Little Fellas instead.

These are wonderfully straight-forward to make, and I feel perfect for slackers and noobs alike.  I also like how there’s no required base layer, which inevitably ends up being the most obnoxious part of a cheesecake, in my opinion.  Not that they still didn’t turn out as prettily as I’d hoped…

I have this tendency to skim past parts of a recipe that I deem “unnecessary”.  Typically these unnecessary items deal with mixing processes that I dismiss as not relevant to the recipe as a whole; I guess I think of baking as a purely chemical process rather than additionally physical.  Yeah…that’s wrong.

For n00bs: When making cheesecake, be careful not to over-beat the filling!  Mix everything together until just blended, then stop.  When you do over-beat the filling you get sad concave cheesecakes like mine.  They still taste just as good…they just look like a lame-o baked them.

So that’s what I get for ignoring the directions.  Luckily, as aforementioned, they still tasted just fine; it’s just that I mixed the batter so long that the light fluffy bubbles inside that were supposed to give the cheesecakes their lift burst, so the insides sank.

For Slackers: This recipe called for the muffin tin to be immersed in a water bath.  This, for the record, is both incredibly annoying and completely unnecessary.  I did this the first time I made these and I don’t believe it made a lick of difference, except that I managed to slop scalding hot water onto my hands.  At least I had baking mitts on.

Anyway, definitely try these out – they’re tasty and easy peasy!

Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes

Makes 1 dozen cheesecake cupcakes.  Slightly modified from Junior’s Cheesecakes cookbook.

Ingredients:

• 16 oz cream cheese
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup heavy or whipping cream
• 1 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Instructions:

1. Beat together 1/2 the cream cheese, 1/2 the sugar and the cornstarch until creamy (~3 minutes).
2. Blend in the other half of the cream cheese.
3. Increase the mixer speed and beat in the rest of the sugar, then the vanilla
4. Blend in the eggs one at a time, beating well.
5. Bea in the cream until just completely blended.  Don’t overmix!
6. Transfer 3/4 cup of the batter to a small bowl and stir in the cocoa.
7. Divide the vanilla batter between the 12 cups, and add a dollop of the chocolate batter to each.
8. Cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, rotating the pan half way through.