7 Dozen Cupcakes: Part 1

A tradition at the school that I teach in is having different staff members bring snack for everyone on Friday mornings. When I found out that my birthday (shared by another staff member too) was on a Friday, I decided that I was crazy enough to sign up to provide snack for that day. After trying to figure out something that was festive and approachable for a staff our size, I decided to make seven dozen cupcakes. Yes, in retrospect, that IS crazy. But I did three different types in enough multiples to cover everyone. I'm going to post each recipe separately to make this a little more reasonable for typing. All of the recipes were taken from the Spring 2010 issues of Food & Drink magazine, published by the LCBO.

Cheesecake Cupcakes

2 eggs

2.5 oz (1/4 package) lemon social tea biscuits

3 tbsp butter, melted

2 pkgs (250 g each) cream cheese, softened (I use light)

1/2 jam (this will be the flavour of your cheesecake)

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (yay for homemade!)

1 cup lemon curd (store bought if homemade is unavailable)

fruit/berries for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Line muffin cups with paper or silicone cups - this will make an even dozen cupcakes. Place eggs in a small bowl and cover them with warm/hot water and set aside. Tempering them like this will make them much easier to manage later on.

2. Crush and whirl biscuits in a food processor until they've reduced to fine crumbs. Whirl in melted butter (might needs slightly more, but don't go overboard - muffin cups WILL leak easily) until crumbs are clumpy.

3. Using a spoon, divide the crumb mixture into the muffin cups evenly and pack down. This becomes your bottom crust. Wipe out the food processor.

4. Add cream cheese (cut up coarsely), eggs, jam, sugar, and vanilla to the food processor and combine. I've been using raspberry red currant jam so far, but you could use any jam or other fruit preserve you'd like. The original recipe suggests a "double fruit" jam to increase the flavour. I'm seriously considering using my homemade blueberry maple pecan compote in a future batch...

5. Spoon evenly into the muffin cups, making sure to keep the filling separate from the crumb base. When all of the filling has been distributed and muffin cups have been balanced, tap the entire tin on the counter top 2-3 times to level them.

6. Bake 20 minutes, or until set - some will start to have small cracks visible. I've made four batches now and they've always been done in exactly 20 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and cool on a rack. Cover and refrigerate until chilled.

8. When ready to serve, top each with a dollop of lemon curd and your fruit garnish of choice!