Citrus Blog hop - Mini White Chocolate Mandarin Orange Cheesecake's

See you can eat three of these, or one piece of cake.  It's all the same;p

  I cannot wait to share this with you all. I was emailed by a lovely fellow blogger about a blog hop she started and was asking for people to host. I was all, I'm not doing that, I can't do that.  Then I thought, why not?  I mean I can bake, sort of. I can write about it and take amazing pictures ( I know, even I laughed at that.)  So why not?

  So I filled out the form and said let's do this!

 I had no idea how this would work, but apparently everyone gets the same ingredient and has to make their own recipe with it and make something and share.  I was so excited and if I was not so clueless I would have known that citrus was the ingredient, you know the whole blog hop being called citrus luv and all.  (I know my mom wonders about me too.)

 And here we are. I am co hosting with all of these other amazing bloggers so please check them out too at the end of my post I will list them all:)

  So I don't know about you, but I am strongly against fruit in my deserts.  I don't know why, but it just seems wrong.  There are a few things that I let slide like cherry or apple pie, lemon curd in anything. And banana and pumpkin anything.  And don't get me started on  veggies in desert.  Whomever thought up zucchini bread must have had a sick mind.( a sick but brilliant mind!)  Sort of like chocolate covered bacon, but I didn't invent that so there!

  So I wanted to make something cute, as my new years resolution was to make smaller sized things, so I have more to share, and I can eat twice as many with half the calories.  It's a scientific fact that two little deserts have less calories then one large one.  Go ahead, work it out.  ( And if you figure out I'm wrong,I don't want to know, I couldn't carry on with that kind of thing hanging over my head.)


My mom got me the cute little push out bottom pans.  She got the tiny spring form pans for me years ago.  I have a good mom!


  So to make something cute, it had to be small.  And to make something small you need the right equipment.  And thanks to my mom, who shares my love of food, I had the perfect pans to make cute tiny little cheesecakes.  So I went on line to find a recipe and found one on a recipe site.  And of course I only copy and pasted it, stupid me.  So I think it was all recipes.com, but I could be wrong.  I figure I am changing it enough that I don't have to worry.

  So the recipe that I found was for a raspberry cheesecake, and raspberries have seeds, and I don't like seeds, or trying to strain them out.  So I figured this would be perfect.  I subbed in mandarin oranges for the fruit.  Now I did this for a few reasons, that I shall now list for you in no particular order:

Each can cost me like 67 cents, I am a big spender!

My list of reasons:

-I can get mandarins in a can, no need to peel or clean them
-there are no seeds, so no straining for seeds
-they are orange, I like orange
-you can also use a slice as garnish
-they were cheap

  Okay now that you have had that little in sight into how my mind works, and you are still here, thanks for that, lets get baking!

  To start you need some small cupcake pans with removable bottoms, or tiny spring form pans, or you could use cupcake liners, but you know I like to be difficult.

  Also the recipe is for a 9 inch cheesecake, but I made a bunch of little ones, it was all good.  I did have to make more crust but that was easy.  I just made the crust as is then halved it again.

White Chocolate Mandarin Orange Cheesecake
(Makes 1 9 inch cake)

Crust
-1 cup Oreo crumbs
-1/4 cup melted butter
-3 TBSP sugar

Mandarin filling
-2 10oz cans of mandarins, drained
-2 heaping TSPS corn starch

Filling
-2 cups white chocolate chips
-1/2 cup half and half cream
-3 packages of cream cheese ( 8oz each)
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 TSP vanilla
-3 eggs

Set oven to 325 (300 if you have a convection oven)

  Start with the crust, melt the butter and mix it with the sugar and crumbs.  Then put enough in the bottom of each pan to make a thin crust.  I used the handle of an ice cream scoop to tamp it down. And set it aside.

These are super tiny, and the ice cream scoop worked perfectly for tamping it down.  And my kid asked why I was putting dirt in the pan, I told him it was for his diner, he was not happy.

  To make the fruit filling, and it even feels wrong typing that, you just take the drained oranges and put about 10 segments aside for decorating.  I used an immersion blender to quickly liquefy the stuff, if you don't have that you can use your food chopper or regular blender.  Then put it in a sauce pan and add two heaping TSPS of corn starch.  Stir it with a whisk until it starts to bubble, and it will thicken very quickly.  Once it has thickened take it off the heat and put it in a bowl and into the fridge to cool.

Pre squished.  Just for reference that I actually used fruit, it still seems wrong some how.

  Then to make the filling, cream the cheese and sugar.  While it is mixing put the chocolate and cream in a bowl and put it over a pot of water on the stove to make a double boiler to melt same.  Add one egg at a time to the cheese mixture and mix each egg in until combined.  Then add the vanilla.  Once the chocolate is melted mix it into the cheese and you are all set.

  I started with the tiny cupcake pans, and added one spoon full of cheese cake filling, then a tiny bit of orange filling, then I spooned some more cheese on top.  I tried to make sure that I did not put too much in as it would over flow, these tins are tiny.  Then I took a skewer and sort of mixed the layers together, but it mostly just leveled out the stuff.

From bottom to top :first layer of cheese mix, middle is the filling, then the top layer and I swirled it together.

  I put my pans on a cookie sheet because I knew that some oil would leak out the bottom, and it did.  I think because the tins are not tight enough, but with the cookie sheet it was all good.

  I did the same with the larger square pans, these are perfect for one persons serving, and I had enough to make two tiny spring form pans.

My bite size cakes.

My bigger single serve cakes, the ones on the bottom are to show you how I filled them.

  The tiny cakes took about 18 minutes, the larger square about 25 and the spring forms about 40.  Just watch and when you can shake them and they are not liquid in the middle you know you are done.  Let them cool for a few minutes then put them, pan and all into the fridge.

  Since I wanted to do something different with the mini ones, I put them in the freezer.

  For the tiny ones I wanted to make them different, I wanted to make them cute.  So what is cuter than chocolate?  Okay chocolate itself is not exactly cute, but you can make cute things with it.  Anyway that is my theory and I'm sticking with it,

  So I melted some chocolate candy melts and added a bunch of paraffin crystals to try and thin it out.  I should have added more, but whatever it worked.

This is how they looked right out of the tins.  Not very cute.

But cover them in chocolate and they are super cute.

  I took a cheesecake and dropped it in the chocolate, and then using two forks took it out, tapped off the extra and set it on some wax paper.  I then put two white chocolate chips on top to decorate.  I could have done white chocolate drizzle, but I wanted fast.  And they turned out really cute.

Is it me or does it look like an Easter cream egg?  Well it didn't taste like one, oh well.

I just garnished my single cakes with a little chocolate and mandarin segments.

This is my spring form cake, I love how the chocolate is all drippy!

And Pork Chop wanted in on the action, you know, because nothing is cooler than being in a picture with a tiny cake.  That's my boy!

I cut it to show you how cute it was, not so I could eat some or anything.

  For the larger square and round cakes I ladled chocolate on top and spread it out a bit with a spatula and then put some orange segments on top to decorate.  I really like how they turned out.  I think my orange filling was a little thick but you know it's in there, you can really see it.

  I hope you try this out, or even just make a large cheese cake, that probably would have been way faster and way easier, but you know I never said I do things the right way.  My way technically is the right way, people just don't seem to know it yet.

  I cannot wait to see what other yummies are going to be shared!

A Little Bit of Everything ~ Roxana ~ @RoxanaGreenGirl

Astig Vegan ~ Richgail

Baker Street ~ Anuradha ~ @bakerstreet29

BigFatBaker ~ Erin ~ @BigFatBaker

CafeTerraBlog ~ Terra ~ @CafeTerraBlog

Cake Duchess ~ Lora ~ @cakeduchess

Cakeballs, Cookies and More ~ Sue

Easily Good Eats

Elephant Eats ~ Amy

Food Wanderings ~ Shulie ~ @foodwanderings

Georgiecakes ~ Georgie ~ @georgiecakes

Hobby And More ~ Richa ~ @betit19

Mike's Baking ~ Mike ~ @mikesbaking

Mis Pensamientos ~ Junia ~ @juniakk

No One Likes Crumbley Cookies ~ TR ~ @TRCrumbley

Oh Cake ~ Jessica ~ @jesshose

Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives ~ Lisa ~ @parsleynsage

Peaches and Donuts ~ Sylvia ~ @PeachesandDonut

Savoring Every Bite ~ Linda ~ @Spicegirlfla

Simply Reem ~ Reem ~ @simplyreem

Smart Food and Fit ~ Lisa ~ @LisaNutrition

Soni's Food for Thought ~ Soni ~ @sonisfood

   Teaspoon of Spice - Serena - @TspCurry

 January is #citruslove month!

Please join in on the #citruslove fun by linking up any citrus recipe from the month of January 2012. Don't forget to link back to this post, so that your readers know to come stop by the #citruslove event! The twitter hashtag is #citruslove :).