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Cherry Cheesecake Muffins




Source of Recipe


Sandra Lee


Recipe Introduction


These were truly good. I am decidedly NOT a ‘Semi-Homemade’ fan (I confess that I watch it to scream with laughter, make snarky remarks and know what they are talking about at the mean, but hilarious ‘Television Without Pity’ Semi-Homemade webpage), but every so often she does something that seems to have a kernel of goodness and sense in it and these muffins just sounded like they would work, so I gave them a try for a charity bake sale at work. I figured that if they weren’t good, I was making enough other stuff that I could feed them to the squirrels without them being missed! Being from Sandra, the directions were of course, a little off and odd, but I adjusted for that. The recipe makes exactly TWICE as many muffins as the recipe says – it says it will make 12 and I came out with 24! I used the regular sized muffin pans – maybe she meant the larger ones, but didn’t say. I had lots of leftover graham cracker mix. And since you can tell from watching the show that she obviously doesn’t like to actually TOUCH food, she gives a bunch of nonsensical directions for using a wet spoon to make a divot in the base batter for the preserves and then using the wet spoon AGAIN to indent the preserves before the topping batter goes on. Just wet your fingers lightly and use them – much easier!!! Seriously, these are VERY yummy and I give her all the credit (damn it).


List of Ingredients




CRUST:

½ c. sugar
2 c. graham cracker crumbs
6 T. melted butter

MUFFIN:

1 box moist white cake mix
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
½ c. sour cream
2 eggs
¼ c. sugar
¼ c. cherry preserves

CHEESE FILLING:

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
¼ c. sugar
1 egg
½ t. freshly-squeezed lemon juice


Recipe



Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin pan (or use paper liners) and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

CRUST:
Combine graham cracker crumbs, ½ c. sugar and melted butter in a small bowl. Divide in half and set half aside. Divide the remaining half of crumb mixture among the 12 muffin cups and gently press into the bottoms (I used this nifty little wooden paddle that I have the is for pressing crusts into tart pans for this – one end of it is exactly the same size as a muffin pan cup and it took one push!).

MUFFINS:
In a large bowl, combine cake mix, softened cream cheese, sour cream, eggs and ¼ c. sugar. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups (a slightly small than normal ice cream scoop is perfect for this). Place 1 t. of cherry preserves on top of muffin batter and with a teaspoon, lightly cut preserves into batter [this is where I started using my wet fingers as described above].

CHEESE FILLING:
Beat together all ingredients for cheese filling until smooth. With the back of a spoon dipped in water [here we go again] to keep from sticking, indent the batter and top with a dollop of the filling to cover the cherry preserves. Sprinkle remaining graham cracker mixture over the top of muffins. Bake for 25 – 20 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before removing muffins from pan.

Makes 24!!!