A couple of weeks ago, I made a Kahlua cheesecake, but some of my friends didn’t get to have any. So I decided to make it again. But the problem is that a 9-inch cake is just far too much for a small gathering of 4-6 people, so I end up with a lot of leftover cake that nobody wants. And so I usually just don’t make a cake for small gatherings.
But then I got this 6-inch cake pan at Michaels.
So I decided that I would make a miniature version of the Kahlua cheesecake.
If they’re both the same height, a 6-inch cheesecake will have 4/9 the volume of a 9-inch cheesecake. Since 4/9 is close enough to 1/2, I just halved everything in the original recipe. So for the crust:
2/3 cup chocolate wafer crumbs
2 tablespoons softened butter
1/2 tablespoon sugar
Mix everything together, and press into the bottom of the pan.
Everything mixed together. There’s half as much as last time.
And then I pressed the crumbs into the bottom of the smaller cake pan.
Now the cheesecake:
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons Kahlua
1 tablespoon butter
1 egg
2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
Bake at 350F for 35 minutes, or until the center is just set.
I hate it when I have to halve something like 1/3 of a cup. It’s 1/6 of a cup, which is 40 milliliters, which works out to 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons. I suppose you could approximate it with 3 tablespoons, too…
Despite leaving the cream cheese at room temperature for a couple of hours, there’s still chunks of it in the batter. Maybe I should’ve used the microwave to get it totally smooth.
Now into the little pan.
Despite the smaller volume, it still took about 35 minutes at 350F. I checked it at 20 and 25 minutes, but the center was still shaky.
Unmolding the cheesecake went surprisingly smoothly. Sure, some chunks fell off near the bottom here and there, but that’s nothing that a good camera angle can’t fix.
Since the Kahlua sauce I made last time turned out to be a disaster when most of it stayed in the squeeze bottle, I decided to go with Kahlua whipped cream this time:
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1 tablespoon Kahlua
Mix the ingredients together, and then just beat until it reaches stiff peaks, or whatever your desired consistency is.
It has an incredibly subtle brown tint that you probably can’t see.
And then I just covered the entire cheesecake with the Kahlua whipped cream. I think it has a homemade look to it. That’s just a nice way of saying that it totally doesn’t look professionally decorated.
Despite the chunks of cream cheese in the cheesecake, I think it turned out pretty well. I should make more miniature cakes in the future!