Mini Salted Caramel Cheesecakes

My obsession for mini cheesecakes continues with these adorable salted caramel cheesecakes. A few weeks ago while I was shopping in Canmore I found this jar of salted caramel sauce in one my favorite little stores there. I knew then that I had to make something special to use it on.

While I’m all about making things from scratch, I won’t go as far as making my own salted caramel, at least not yet. Why waste time when I can find it in stores and it’s really good. Probably better than I would make it, since I’d never made it before. I know, shocker.

Let’s be serious here, I’d rather spend the time eating these cheesecakes. You probably all know by now that cheesecake is my favorite dessert, any kind of cheesecake. This is why I when I saw this salted caramel, I just knew mini cheesecakes was the way to go.

The bottom crust is a very simple crust made with graham crackers, brown sugar and butter, but it’s my favorite way to make crust for cheesecakes. The cheesecake itself is my recipe I use all the time for cheesecake, I just adjusted the quantities. If your cheesecake top cracks like mine, don’t worry about it, you’ll cover it up with the salted caramel and nobody will know. However, if you’re a perfectionist and would like to avoid the cracks, you can either create a water bath while baking the cheesecake or avoid over baking, I think that’s why mine cracked, I might have baked them a little too long. Still getting used to my oven.

Ingredients

For crust
2 1/4 cups crushed graham crackers
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup butter melted, 1 stick
For cheesecake
16 oz cream cheese 2 packages
4 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
For Topping
18 tbsp salted caramel
kosher salt
US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.
In a food processor add the crushed graham crackers, brown sugar and melted butter. Pulse a few times until fine crumbs form. Pat mixture into ungreased mini cheesecake pan in each individual cup.
Add the cream cheese, sugar to the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth. Add the sour cream, eggs, flour and salt to the mixer and mix until well combined and smooth.
Add about 2 to 3 tbsp of the cream cheese mixture to each cup. The mini cheesecake pan has 12 cups, there will be crumbs and cheesecake mixture left over for another 6 mini cakes, so if you only have one pan, refrigerate the crust and cheesecake mixture until the pan is free to continue.
Bake the cheesecakes for about 15 to 20 minutes. Let the cheesecakes cool and come to room temperature.
Melt the salted caramel in the microwave until you can spoon it out. Top each cheesecake with about 1 tbsp of the salted caramel then sprinkle with a bit of kosher salt.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.