Hey, my Foodie Friends!! We are well into the festive period now and what could be a more fun alternative to Christmas pudding than these Christmas Tree Cheesecakes.
Individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes
These individual beauties are great as a dessert for your guests and can be decorated with any fruit. What’s more, the kids can get involved and help you make them. Great fun and pretty yum I can tell you.
A simple but individual Christmas dessert. But how to make them?
C’mon, I’ll show you how…
1. Get all of the ingredients together
As always, let’s get the ingredients together before we do any real preparation, or start making the cheesecakes. Apart from the fruit, which you can choose depending on your guests, it’s pretty standard cheesecake ingredients. Cream cheese, icing sugar, cream, digestive biscuits, butter etc.
Get all of the ingredients together
Hang on though, I know I’ve used fruit for the topping but you don’t have to. What about chocolate? Or even sweets for that matter! How about M&Ms!? Now they sound great, right?
2. The biscuit base
First of all, take the digestive biscuits, I use McVities but any brand will do, and crush them to the texture of crumbs.
Make sure the biscuits are crushed to a fine crumb
You can make the fine crumb by putting the biscuits through a blender. However, if you don’t have a blender simply put the biscuits in a freezer bag and bash the biscuits with a rolling pin until you have a fine crumb. This method doesn’t take as long as you think and can be quite therapeutic!????
Next, melt the butter under a low heat and then add the crushed biscuit crumb. You only need to mix the biscuit and butter together until the biscuit has absorbed all of the melted butter. Keep the heat low and make sure you don’t burn the biscuit crumb. To put this in context, this should take no more than 30 seconds.
Finally, take the individual Christmas Tree moulds and spoon enough crumb base into the moulds to cover the base, and flatten down with a teaspoon. Then set aside in the fridge to set.
Press the cheesecake base mix into the mould
3. Make the filling
Now for the sweet stuff… Take the cream and whip it until it just starts to stiffen up. Be careful not to over whip. Then set aside. As a tip, if you do over whip the cream and it starts to split then just add a couple of tablespoons of unwhipped cream and mix it in and it should be fine.
Now take the cream cheese and whisk until it loosens up a little. Now add the icing sugar and mix in and then add the cream and mix again.
Add the icing sugar to the cream cheese
Mix in the cream
4. Make the Christmas Tree Cheesecakes
With the biscuit bases now set and the cheesecake filling made you can spoon the filling onto the bases. Make sure the filling fills the whole mould. Once full, level the filling off with a pallet knife.
Fill the mould with the cheesecake mix
Now it’s time to add the fruit, or M&Ms! I’ve sliced the fruit so that it was able to fit the moulds and create some texture. The method of slicing is dependent on the fruit. For example, the raspberries and blueberries were simply cut in half, whereas the strawberries with thinly sliced.
Once the fruit is prepared gently, and delicately place the fruit onto the cheesecakes pressing the fruit into the cheesecake mixture.
Individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes
And there you go. Your individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes are made. Put these in the fridge to set. This will take a minimum of 2 hours and I advise leaving overnight if you can.
Now the hard bit, getting these beauties out of their moulds…
5. Remove the cheesecakes from their moulds
There is no other way of saying this other than this can be a pain! What’s more, if you get it wrong the cheesecakes can end up as a stodgy mess. So what’s the best way of doing this?
I find using one of two methods gets the best results. If you have one, and I highly recommend you getting one if you haven’t, then use a kitchen blowtorch to gently heat the sides of the mould. This will loosen the filling and base and the cheesecakes should easily lift from the moulds.
If you don’t have a kitchen blowtorch then take a tea towel and run it through some hot water. Then, rinse it out and wrap it around the moulds. This should have the same effect as above and loosen the filling to release the cheesecakes. This can be a little hit and miss though so try it twice if it doesn’t work the first time.
The end result should be these lovely individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes:
Individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes
Now, just plate them separately and serve to your guests with a little garnish. Very festive and lots of fun. Yum!
Individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes
OK, my Foodie Followers! That’s it for this time. I hope you enjoyed this recipe and give it a go yourselves. If you do, let me know how you get on. I’d love to know.
As always, many thanks for reading and until next time! Merry Christmas to you all…Steve.
These individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes are so much fun. A wonderful dessert recipe for any Christmas dinner party. Try making them with the kids. Yum! | theyumyumclub.com
- 100 grams digestive biscuits
- 50 grams unsalted butter
- 500 grams cream cheese
- 100 grams icing sugar
- 200 grams whipped cream
- Fruits or sweets for topping
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First, pull all of the ingredients together.
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Now, make the cheesecake biscuit base by firstly crushing the biscuits to a fine crumb.
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Next, melt the butter over a low heat and mix in the crumb until the melted butter is absorbed into the biscuit crumb. About 30 seconds.
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Spoon the crumb and butter mix into the Christmas tree moulds and spread over the mould and pat down with a spoon. Set aside in the fridge to set.
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Next, make the cheesecake filling. Firstly, add the cream cheese to the icing sugar and mix in thoroughly.
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Now, add the whipped cream and mix again thoroughly.
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Spoon the cream cheese mixture into the Christmas tree moulds and spread smooth with a pallet knife.
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Now, slice the fruit or sweets so the fit on top of the cheesecake filling and inside of the mould, and press into the cheese. Leave to set in the fridge for at least 2 hours, and overnight if you can.
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Finally, using either a kitchen blowtorch or a warm damp tea towel soften the filling by heating the outside of the mould and remove the cheesecake.
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Serve as individual cheesecakes garnished with fruits or sweets.
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And there you have it. Individual Christmas Tree Cheesecakes! Festive and Yummy!
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