Halloween Chocolate Chip Mini Cheesecakes

One of our projects this weekend was making some festive mini cheesecakes.  This recipe is the easiest thing ever and perfect for little hands to help.  They can basically do it by themselves with just a little supervision.  It's a variation on my regular Mini Cheesecakes but much more fun for Halloween. 

Ingredients:

Crust

5 chocolate graham crackers

3tbl brown sugar

3.5 tbl butter, melted

small pinch of salt

Cheesecake

8-oz cream cheese, softened
1/3 (heaping) cup sugar
1 large egg
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate chips

Festive Sprinkles

Directions: 

1. Pre-heat your over to 350 degrees. Crush the graham crackers to a powder.  I use a meat mallet but I gave Noah a sturdy plastic cup with a flat base and that worked just as good. 

2. Melt the butter and add to the crushed graham crackers.  Add brown sugar and salt. Mix well with a fork.  This step is perfect for little hands.  Make sure the bowl is big enough so they don't spill out the sides.  Once it's all mixed, evenly spread the crust onto the bottom of a muffin pan filled with liners.  With a small spoon press the mixture in the bottom.

3. In a separate bowl add softened cream cheese and the rest of the cheesecake ingredients, less the chocolate chips.  Mix well with a hand mixer until there are no lumps left.

4. Now we're ready to assemble the cheesecakes.  Add a couple of chocolate chips to the top of the crust.  Evenly spread the cheesecake mixture in all twelve muffin tins.  Top with some festive sprinkles.

5. Bake 23-25 minutes and be patient like Noah was. =) You'll know it's done when you can stick a knife in the middle and it comes out clean. (unless you hit the chocolate chips.... then you'll probably get that)  Let cool and eat them all because they will be that amazing.