Conversation Heart Cheesecakes

By á-24350

Ingredients

• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs (15 squares)
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1/2 stick butter (melted)
• 16 ounces (2 blocks) cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 cups sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• food coloring - pink, purple, blue, green, yellow, and red

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. You will need a water bath to bake your cheesecakes, so either place your roasting pan in the oven filled with enough water to go half way up the sides of your heart molds and allow the water to heat along with the oven or bring some water to a boil in a tea pot or the microwave. A little trick I use - my roasting pan has a flat rack with handles that fit inside. I set my two heart molds on the rack, so that later I can simply lower the rack along with the filled heart molds into the hot water in the roasting pan (see image below.)Combine graham cracker crumbs, cinnamon, and melted butter, stirring until it looks like sand. (I used my food processor to grind the graham crackers, then I added the cinnamon and butter and pulsed it until well combined.) Spoon out about a tablespoon of crumb mixture into each heart cavity. Press the crumbs down making an even crust. Refrigerate until ready to fill with cheesecake mixture. Note: If you are only making 12 cheesecakes, you will have some of this leftover.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a mixing bowl using a hand held mixer, beat the cream cheese on medium high until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Be sure to scrape the cream cheese out of the mixing blade as well. You don't want lumps in your cheesecake. Add sugar and beat for one minute. Add eggs and beat until creamy, 1 to 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl once. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix just to combine.
Equally divide the filling among 6 bowls. Add food coloring to create the colors you'd like. It took between five and eight drops of color to achieve the colors of my cakes. For orange, mix yellow and red together. If you prefer, you can add fruit purees instead.
Pour colored cheesecake filling into the heart shaped cavities in your Wilton silicone mold. If you are making 12 larger hearts, then fill the cavities to the top, if you are making 18, then only fill them about 3/4 full. If making 12, you will have a few tablespoonfuls of each color left over. You can pour this extra filling into mini heart shaped molds, or layer the colors into one or two ramekins to achieve a rainbow effect. I made pink, lavender, yellow, orange, green, and blue hearts, but have to say the blue was awful looking once baked. I would go lighter next time.
As I mentioned, I set my heart molds on a flat rack, which made it so easy to move and lower into the roasting pan which was already filled with water that had heated up while the oven was pre-heating. You can set your heart molds in your roasting pan, then carefully pour boiling water around the heart molds. Just fill up the pan so that the water goes half way up the sides of the heart mold.

Bake for 15-28 minutes, depending on the size of your molds (45 minutes for a whole cheesecake.) When finished baking, the center of each cake should still jiggle but look set, not soupy. I baked my cakes 30 minutes (I got distracted and didn't check them when I should have.) They developed a bit of a skin on top, but really were perfect inside. So I would suggest about 26-28 minutes if you fill the heart molds completely, as I did. If you fill them 3/4 full, then go with 20-25 minutes and about 15 minutes for the mini cakes. I baked my larger cakes, then put the minis in the oven afterwards.

Remove your baked cheesecakes and allow to cool at room temperature for an hour. The minis will probably cool in about 30 minutes.

The easiest way to get these cheesecakes out of the molds is to freeze them for a few hours. They pop right out. I only broke off a tiny piece of crust from one of my hearts after allowing them to freeze for two hours. If you refrigerate them, let them chill overnight before trying to remove them from the molds. My frozen hearts did have beads of condensation on them when I took them out of the freezer, but they dried after refrigerating them for a while. Of course you don't want to serve them frozen, so you'll need to allow them to warm up before serving.