"Smaller adaptations of favorite desserts, such as raspberry-swirled cheesecake, are always appealing. Everyone gets his or her own, with plenty of buttery graham-cracker crust in each bite. Drops of fresh raspberry puree are pulled through cream cheese batter to give the cakes a marbelized look. Baking the cupcakes in a hot-water bath produces the creamiest results and prevents the batter from sinking in the oven." - Martha Loved the pictures of these cakes. So juicy and creamy looking! Making cheesecakes, in general, is not that hard a process. I've always stuck to the same recipe: per one block of cream cheese add 1/2 t vanilla, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 egg. They always seem to come out great. This recipe called out for a bit different distribution: less sugar, more eggs. Anyway, still very easy.
I chose not to use graham-crackers because I didn't have any (as usual they mysteriously disappeared from the pantry before I got a chance to use them.) So I had some Chocolate Chunk Cookie dough in the frig and decide to bake those to place in the bottom of my cupcakes instead. I really felt like they would do the trick because the cookie dough was stable enough and the chocolate could only compliment the raspberries at the least! I baked those just a bit shy of the 18 minutes usually needed, about 13 minutes. I figured they would bake some more in the oven with the chessecake batter on them and still not be too crisp. I wanted them soft-ish. Otherwise I follwed the recipe as is.
My raspberry puree was perfect, the batter looked good and creamy and tasted the part. I placed the cookies in the bottom of each paper-lined cup and filled them 3/4 the way to the top with batter as directed. I also placed each tin of cakes into a water bath to bake.
I ended up having to bake them about 35 minutes instead of the 22 minutes as Martha reccommends. At 22 minutes they still looked liquidy and I thought they should be more solid. At 35 they still looked slightly liquidy but overall more solid, no sinking batter and very beautiful! So I took them from the oven and let them cool abit. I placed them in the frig for 4 hours or more to firm up. When I took them out to display and photograph, I found that they were not only still liquid-ish but the paper liners were soaked and were tearing upon trying to lift them from the tins! This I did not enjoy. As you can see by the photo, the paper liners are not round anymore (and these were the good pics) and we had to eat them with a spoon from the paper liners because there was no way the paper would peel from the cheesecake without a huge mess.
I am disappointed in this recipe. I wouldn't mind making them again, but I'd use my own cheesecake recipe and add raspberry puree to it. I think I will also use my silicone baking cups just in case. For some reason the liners were so soaked that I can't tell if it came from the batter or if while cooking in the water bath, it bubbled up and got into the paperliners and tin forms.
Nonetheless, they tasted great; definitely creamy cakes! Perhaps even a larger cheesecake with this recipe would turn out OK with more time in the oven.
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