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My husband and I are total geeks. We are huge Marvel fans, so you can imagine how crazy excited we are to see The Winter Soldier when it hits shelves on September 9th. Oh, and it just so happens to fall on our 5 year wedding anniversary, so I am totally going to include it in my husband’s gift extravaganza and make it a movie night to remember! I have a few fun tricks up my sleeve for the big day, but one that I am really going to have fun with is making our annual cheesecake. It has become a bit of a tradition that we have cheesecake on our wedding anniversary each year, and so far we have had pumpkin cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake and so on over the years. But this year I decided to go a little off tradition and make miniature cheesecakes filled with his favorite sweet treat, M&M’s. These little pieces of heaven are rich, delicious and completely NO bake so you can get the kids in on it as well! And believe me, the minute you taste one it will be your go-to from there on out.
Caramel M&M Mini Cheesecakes
This recipe makes 12 mini cheesecakes and takes about 30 minutes to prepare. The cheesecake will set in the fridge after 2 hours but I like to leave them in a little longer. When I am ready to serve I can just drizzle some caramel and voila – mini cakes of sweet chocolaty heaven. Here is what you need:
- 2 packages cream cheese
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 8oz bag of M&M’s
- 15 chocolate cookies
- 1/4 stick of butter
- muffin tin
- caramel
- chocolate chunks (optional)
- Marvel movie of your choice (for a sweet geeky date night!)
The first thing you are going to do is mix up your cream cheese, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a blender or stand mixer until smooth and free of chunks then put it in the fridge until you are ready to pour. Next, crush up your chocolate cookies. These can be any kind of chocolate cookie, but I am using sandwich cookies and scraping off the filling. You can also use graham crackers or shortbread if you aren’t a fan of all that chocolate.
Now melt 1/4 stick of butter, pour it in with your crushed cookies and mix well. Grab a muffin tin and a spoon and drop a generous spoonful of cookie mixture into each one and press firmly until you have a smooth “bottom” for your cheesecakes. After that, take the cream cheese back out of the fridge and add in your M&M’s. I like to add around 3/4 of an 8oz bag, but you might want more or less.
Mix gently. Now I don’t know about you, but I could totally eat this as is. Doesn’t it look delicious already? I probably should have just used the red and blue since we’re doing the whole Captain America thing, but I didn’t think of it in time and there are *all* kinds of colors in the Marvel universe – green for The Hulk, red and yellow for Iron Man and so on. While I am talking about Marvel, make sure to scoop up this coupon for $5 off The Winter Soldier with the purchase of your M&M’s from Walmart (hooray for savings)! But now that I’ve gotten sidetracked, lets get back to the recipe.
This is where it gets a little tricky. You want to fill up each cup with your cheesecake mixture. Remember when I said to chill your cream cheese until *right* when you are ready to use it? It’s because if you don’t your M&M’s colors will run all over the place. So make sure to keep this baby COLD. I am going to do this a little better next time because you can see my colors are starting to run from leaving it out too long, but you want to make sure to smooth out the top of each cup.
Once everything is filled and smoothed out, set them in the fridge (or freezer) to chill for a few hours. When they are ready to be served, heat up some caramel on the stove or in the microwave and then pop each one of your cheesecakes out of the tray using a thin knife along the edges – you won’t need to do it the whole way around, just a tiny bit and the cake will pop right out.
At this point you have two options – either drizzle it with caramel like this:
Or flip them over and drizzle it like this:
They both look equally drool worthy but I think I like the first option better. It is easier to hold (by the bottom) and I won’t have to use forks and plates. These were only a test run of the real deal, but since I was making a batch already I scooped up the original Captain America while I was at Walmart with an idea for a fun pre-anniversary night movie night. I even made some cute little shields to go on top of the cheesecakes!
Aren’t those cute? The movie was awesome, the cheesecakes were heavenly and we even polished off the rest of the M&M’s (because who doesn’t love M&M’s?) while spending some much needed quality time together after the kids went to bed. I can’t wait to do it all over again on our anniversary!
Are you a Marvel fan like me? Do you want to win a $100 Walmart gift card? Head over to www.heroeseatmms.com and take either the “Which Marvel super hero are you” or “Which M&Ms character are you” quiz, then come back here and leave a comment with your results! **This contest is COMING SOON** #CollectiveBias #HeroesEatMMs
