Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes

The size of a cupcake, Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes are an indulgent and festive holiday treat. Decadent cheesecake is loaded with chunks of Gingerbread Oreo Cookies over a buttery gingerbread crust. Moreover, a whipped cream topping infused with more Oreo crumbs completes the dessert. In short, this holiday treat should at least get you off Santa’s Naughty List.

The subtle hints of gingerbread in these mini cheesecakes are wonderful. The flavor doesn’t overpower the classic taste of the cheesecake we all love so much, and it’s not too sweet, either.  

The pairing between the two, the Gingerbread Oreo’s and the cheesecake, is holiday indulgence at it’s finest.

If you love baking with Oreo’s, like I do, check out these other luscious desserts. For St. Patrick’s Day, make a Pistachio Cookie Cake, (it has some green and uses Pistachio Oreos) and for your next harvest, indulge in this delicious Harvest Dirt Trifle. The trifle uses the classic chocolate Oreo we all know and love.

Let’s make some Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes

First, we need to make some cookie crumbs. Lots of them. Using a blender or food processor, make crumbs from about 17 Gingerbread Oreo Cookies. 

Second, take out 3 tablespoons of the crumbs for later use in the topping. 

With the amount leftover, it should be about 1 1/2 cups, mix those crumbs with the melted butter. This mixture will be the crust.

Third, get out 2 standard muffin pans and line 20 (out of 24) with cupcake liners. 

Lastly, evenly divide the crumb/butter mixture into the 20 liners and pat them down. 

I wish there was a super easy way to pat the crumb mixture down, here’s what I’ve tried. Fingertips work ok so long as you don’t have long finger nails. The bottom of a 1/3 cup works ok, but every 4th one or so gets crazy and sticks to the bottom. The bottom of a spoon works ok, but you have to spin it around quite a bit to get it from different angles. 

So, help out a blogger and please let me know if you come up with a plan that works great for patting down these crusts. Email me, leave a comment below, or message me on Pinterest. Thanks!

The cheesecake layer.

Now that the crust is in place, let’s put together the delicious cheesecake layer. 

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until it’s nice and smooth. Depending on what type of mixer you have, I find it’s easier to add one 8 oz. bar into the bowl at a time. When I’ve started with all 3 before, the naughty little cream cheese climbed right up the beaters and created a mess. Ugh! 

Once the cream cheese is smooth of lumps and bumps, add the vanilla extract and then 1 egg at a time. After the last egg has been added, and everything is well blended, you can stop the mixer.

Add the roughly chopped 12 cookies, and fold them into the batter using your spatula.

Again, divide evenly amongst the 20 cupcake liners. The cupcake liners will be pretty full.

Pop them into the preheated oven set at 325° and bake them for 25 – 30 minutes. Once they’re done baking, let them cool completely, then refrigerate for 2 hours. 

At this point, you could serve them. They’re that good without the whipped cream topping, but then again, the topping is the bomb. But check out how pretty they are from the oven.

As seen above, the cookies give color to the cheesecake. The center of the Gingerbread Oreo’s have red and green speckles in them that play out nicely in these Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes. Each bite shows you more colors and textures.

Making the Gingerbread Topping.

You’ll need an electric mixer for this, preferably a stand mixer. Turning whipping cream into stiff peaks works better if you chill the bowl, and even the beaters first. Put them into the refrigerator or freezer just until they’re cold to the touch. 

In your bowl, add the whipping cream, powdered sugar, vanilla, and the 3 tablespoons of reserved cookie crumbs (from when we began this cheesecake journey).

Set your beaters on high and let the machine do the work. Once the peaks start to form, be careful to not overmix or it can break the whipping cream. Don’t panic, however, the internet can tell you how to fix it. Check out Martha Stewart’s video on how to fix over whipped cream. 

Piping the topping onto the mini cheesecakes.

Because there are cookie crumbs in the topping, you have to choose your piping tip carefully. It should be a tip that’s more open-ended, thus letting the crumbs through, instead of it getting clogged. 

If you haven’t eaten all the remaining cookies, you can further decorate the Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes. I recommend either chopping them in half (if your topping is high enough to support them), or quarter them. 

I’m sure that however you decorate, it’s going to taste and look wonderful. I hope you love these as much as I do — enjoy!

Follow me on Pinterest and post a picture of your Mini Gingerbread Cheesecakes. We’d all love to see them, I’m sure they’re beautiful. 

Happy baking and have a blessed day.

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