For a wedding this weekend (more pictures on some fab-u-lous details at this wedding are to come…) I helped with the “dessert bar.”

This bride loves mini things. Anything mini. Mini this, mini that… she loves it! So, in addition to a cupcake tower (instead of a traditional wedding cake), she had a few friends make mini desserts and had an entire bar of them!

More on why this is in a barn – yes, it was amazing! – but I decided to make mini cheesecakes. They were a hit, although I almost had a near-mishap baking them the morning of the wedding!

I took a regular cheesecake recipe (the normal 16 oz. cream cheese, 1 tbsp. lemon juice, 1 tsp. vanilla, ¾ cups sugar, 2 eggs) and beat it until it was extra extra extra fluffy. Hey, making anything mini means you need all the fluff you can get!

But first, I had to make the contraption these little guys would go in. I used foil cupcake holders thinking they would be a little more festive than regular white ones. Then I put two vanilla wafers in the bottom of each one to act at the “crust.” I fiddled with what some other options might be, or could I put actual crust, but crumbled, in the bottom… but the suggestion in the recipe turned out to be the best one.

Next, I filled each cup about 2/3 of the way since cheesecake always expands and then falls. They popped in the oven, cooled in the refrigerator, and were ready to go!

But first, a little added decorating on half of them…

After drizzling some chocolate, I then rigged up another contraption for the travel. 88F degrees. One hour ceremony. 30 minute drive to the reception. Add those all up, forget about the idea of refrigeration at the church, and you have got yourself in a pickle.

Thankfully, after a lot of icepacks and some homemade insulation, they survived and were the best thing on the dessert bar! Okay, not really. I mean they were good, but everything else was good too!