Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes

Hello everyone,

Hope you are having a great Thursday!! I did some cleaning today as well as rearranged our bedroom. I felt it was time for something different and L really doesn't care how the room looks as long as he has somewhere to sleep. 

I wanted to share a recipe with you that I found on Pinterest which came from Annie's Eats.  If you have not checked out Annie's Eats you sure are missing out on some great recipe ideas. Thanks Lia Joy over at Life is aMayesing for telling me about this great website! Well anyways, the reason I decided to make these wonderful cheesecake cupcakes was because a trip to HEB yesterday. We went to HEB and noticed that raspberries were on sale. I know.... Crazy right?? So of course I got on my phone while we were shopping and looked on Pinterest and what do you know....these lovely Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes pops up. Hope you enjoy some yummy raspberries if you are here in Houston before the sale ends!!

                                          

Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes

Recipe adapted from: Annie's Eats

Ingredients:

For the crust:

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs (see below)

4 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

3 tbsp. sugar

For the topping:

6 oz. fresh raspberries 

2 tbsp. sugar

Extra raspberries for garnish if desired

For the filling:

2 lbs. cream cheese, at room temperature (I don’t have a kitchen scale so I used 4-8oz. boxes of cream cheese)

1 ½ cups sugar

Pinch of salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

4 large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 325°F. Line your cupcake pan with paper liners.  I purchased a package of graham crackers and decided I would crush them myself. I used about a package and a half to get the correct measurement needed. Once you have crushed your graham crackers into crumbs, combine the crumbs with the melted butter and sugar. Stir together with a fork until well blended and all of the dry ingredients are moistened. Press about 1 tablespoon of the mixture into the bottom of each cupcake liner. (I didn’t have a small enough cup to help even the crumbs out so I used a spoon and tried to even it out as much as possible.) After the crumbs are smooth to your desire, bake them for 5 minutes or until set. Transfer to a cooling rack.

To make the raspberry puree, I combined the raspberries and sugar in a blender (you can use a food processor as well.) Process until smooth, then pour through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds.  (Sorry I didn’t take any pictures of the process.)

Next, to make the cheesecake filling beat the cream cheese on medium-high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy.  Blend in the sugar until smooth. Mix in the salt and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

I assembled mine a little different than the recipe called for just because I wanted to try and get more raspberry flavor.  Spoon 2 tablespoons of the cheesecake batter over the crust in each cupcake liner. I then poured ½ teaspoon of raspberry puree over the cheesecake filling and followed that by another 1 tablespoon of cheesecake filling. I used the back of a soon to help me even out the cheesecake filling. I then dotted about 3 dots of the raspberry puree over the filling with a spoon. (Sorry, I didn’t measure the exact amount) Next, use a toothpick or a wooden skewer to lightly swirl and create a marbled effect.

Bake until the filling is set, about 22 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. (They will look puffed when you take them out of the oven, but will return to normal). Transfer to a wire cooling rack and let cool to room temperature. Transfer to the refrigerator and let chill for at least 4 hours before serving.

*Recipe adapted from Annie’s Eats which was barely adapted from Martha Stewart’sCupcakes. 

Happy Thursday and yummy eats!!