Mmm cheesecake.  It’s creamy, it’s sweet without being cloying, and it’s delicious.  Always.  So when a friend came to work lamenting the “oreo cheesecake” she had gotten at Mike’s, saying that it was merely chocolate cake with some wierd creamcheese filling, I started plotting these little delights.  She lamented the Mike’s cheesecake in August or so and I made her these in November; enough time for her to totally forget about that disappointment 🙂

My first challenge for these was to determine just what exactly I was going to do for the cupcakes and as Twitter was alive with Joanne Chang’s Flour cookbook and it seemed to be THE cookbook everyone was using. I determined that I needed to make her oreos.  So I found the recipe on Boston.com thanks to Joanne Chang herself directing me to it (super thanks!).  And started plotting.  I had a vision of cheesecake with a full oreo base, until I realized that making all those oreos was just way more work than I was willing to put in ;P
So I just made the cookies, sans filling, and put them in my mini-cheesecake pan as crust.  They were delicious, and will definately be made this way again!

The cheesecake was a breeze, after a quick phone call to my mom (the bible of all cooking questions and head-full of random and mostly useful information), I had a cheesecake recipe that worked with what I had in my pantry/fridge.  I was giddy.  I started cooking on Sunday around 1pm.  I finished cooking around 8pm.  I was exhausted, but it was worth it.  Homemade Oreos, dark chocolate cheesecake, vanilla cheesecake, dark chocolate cheesecake.  Delicious.  And perfect.  My coworkers certainly thought so!

Oreo Cheesecake
Note: I’ve made a lot of cheesecake.  This one is very simple.  Try it.  If you want to make a full-sized cheesecake follow all of the directions below but replace the oreo cookie with a cookie crumb crust and  bake the cakes for an additional 10-15 minutes.  Also, I used the Flour recipe for my oreo cookies in the bottom of the cheesecake.  I baked the cookies according to the recipe, did not fill them, then cut them to size and dropped them into my mini spring-form pan.

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1-8oz pkg cream cheese, full-fat, softened to room temp
1 1/2 cup Greek yogurt or sour cream, separated
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbs brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit.  Melt the chocolate chips over low heat.  Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until creamy.  Add 1/2 cup of the Greek yogurt or sour cream and the eggs to the cream cheese-sugar mixture.  Beat this until smooth.  Pour 1/3 of the cheesecake batter into another bowl and add the vanilla to this bowl.  Mix well.  Add the melted chocolate to the larger quantity of cheesecake batter (roughly 2/3 of the whole batter).  Mix well.  In a mini-spring-form pan (or a cupcake tin lined with paper cups) drop the cheesecake batter over the homemade oreo cookies, alternating chocolate-vanilla-chocolate for an oreo look. Pouring your batter gently over the back of a spoon (to disperse it, like making a layered cocktail) will keep the layers from blending together.  Put the cheesecakes in the oven.  While the cheesecakes cook, combine the rest of the yogurt/sour cream (1 cup) and the 2 tbs of brown sugar to make a glaze. Remove the cheesecake from the oven (about 10 minutes into baking) and glaze them with the yogurt/brown sugar mixture.  Return the cheesecakes to the oven for another 15-20 minutes, until they are light golden brown.  Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool completely; overnight or at least 6 hrs is ideal.  Serve them to someone who loves sweets, they’ll be over the moon about them.  I swear it.